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ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

FROM AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW 



MGLMD AND THE ENGLISH 

FROM 

AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW 



BY 

PRICE COLLIER 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1916 



^^ 



c 






6'-^ 



•1 



Copyright y igoQ 
By Charles Scribner's Sons 



Fublished March, 1909 

Second Impression, April, 1909 

Third Impression, September, 1909 

Fourth Impression, October, 1909 

Fifth Impression, December, 1909 

Sixth Impression, February, 1910 

Seventh Impression, August, 1910 

Eighth Impression, February, 1911 

Ninth Impression, October, 1911 

Tenth Impression, December, 1911 

ElcTcnth Impression, March, 1912 

Twelfth Impression, May, 1913 

Thirteenth Impression, December, 1913 

Fourteenth Impression, August, 1914 

Fifteenth Impression, November, 1914 



Popular Edition, May, igri 

Second Impression, January, 19x2 

Third Impression, September, 1912 

Fourth Impression, September, 1913 

Fifth Impression, November, 1914 

Sixth Impression. August, 1915 

Seventh Impression, June, 1916 



TKANSFSB 
A Q. PUBLIC LIBOABY 




45977^ 



DISTRICT OF GOLUMBIA PROPERTY 



MY WIFE KATHARINE 



FOREWORD FOR THIS EDITION BY 
LORD ROSEBERY 

I AM glad to know that there is to be a cheap 
edition of this famous book, probably the best ever 
written by an American about England. For the 
price of the new issue will enable every one to see 
what is said about this country by a just, able, and 
benevolent observer. The result is very different 
from an *^ England and the English," written by a 
home-bred Englishman, bred in England, under 
English tradition, and seeing England with EngHsh 
eyes, but it is much more wholesome and much 
more likely to be correct. Every patriotic English- 
man must therefore have been deeply interested by 
Mr. Collier's book and rejoice at the promise of a 
cheap edition which will enable a wider range of 
readers to appreciate our strength and weakness as 
set forth by this broad and keen observer. 

ROSEBERY 



CONTENTS 

Page 

I First Impressions 3 

II Who Are the English? 33 

III The Land of Compromise 66 

IV English Home Life 115 

V Are the English Dull? 150 

VI Sport 194 

VII Ireland 230 

VIII An English Country Town 263 

IX Society 305 

X Conclusion 342 



ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
FROM AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW 



ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

FROM AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW 

I 

FIRST IMPRESSIONS 

IEAVING New York on a steamer officered and 
manned by Englishmen your impressions may 
-^ begin from the moment you put foot on board. 
The change from the restless volubility of the Irish 
cab driver to the icy servility of the Englishman of 
the servant class is soothing, depressing, irritating 
or amusing as the case may be. The chattering, 
waving, gesticulating, high-voiced travellers, and 
good-byers, are apparently of no interest to the stolid 
stewards, who move about at slower speed, speak in 
lower tones, do what they have to do with as little 
unnecessary expenditure of nerve, and muscle, and 
speech power, as possible. Even before the ship 
moves you have moved from the exhilarating, brac- 
ing, bright air of inland and upland plains, to the 
heavier and more moist climate of an island. Move- 
ment, speech, feature, and bulk are different. They 
are all, movement, speech, feature, and bulk, differ- 
ent in a way that is easily and definitely expressed 

3 



4 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

by one word: heavy. Later one finds that this word 
is used accurately. The English men, women, horses, 
vehicles, machinery, houses, furniture, food, are all 
heavier in proportion than ours. 

What will you have for breakfast, if, alas, you will 
have any breakfast the first morning out? Some- 
thing very light perhaps. These islanders, you soon 
find, have little regard for lightness. A light dish 
of eggs in some form, a light roll, fresh butter, coffee 
and hot milk ? Yes, of a sort, but none of them hght. 
You soon forswear coffee for tea, and ere long the 
passive bulwark of resistance wearies you into eggs 
and bacon, and cold meat, and jams, for your first 
meal of the day. Little things are typical. What 
you want is not refused you, but what they have and 
like is gradually forced upon you. Thus they gov- 
ern their colonies. No raising of voices, no useless 
and prolonged discussion, no heat generated, no rid- 
icule of your habits, or eulogy of their own, none of 
these, but just slow-moving, unchanging, confident 
bulk! 

The monotonous and solemn "yes, sir,** "thank 
you, sir," of the servants, may lead you to suppose 
that at any rate this class of English man and woman 
is servile, is lacking in the national trait of confidence, 
is perhaps amenable to suggestions of a change. On 
the contrary, this class less even than others. The 
manner and speech are merely mechanical. The un- 
blushing demands, either frankly open, or awkwardly 
surreptitious, for tips are part of the day's work. 
They are servants, they know it, they have no ob- 
jection to your knowing it, and most of them have 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS 5 

little ambition to be anything else. They are not in 
that position in the meantime, but permanently; they 
are not serving, while waiting for something else; 
service is their career. The American may "sHng 
hash" at Coney Island, or in a western frontier town, 
until he can escape to become something else, but 
as a vocation he does not recognize it. At first, there- 
fore, these people are puzzHng, we shall see later that 
they are a factor in the civilization we are about to 
explore. They have their pride, their rules of prece- 
dence, their code; they are fixed, immovable, uncon- 
cerned about other careers, undisturbed by hazy am- 
bitions, and insistent upon their privileges, as are all 
other Englishmen. They will not overstep the boun- 
dary lines of your personal position, and they jeal- 
ously guard the boundaries of their own. 

When we come to know them better we find that, 
although they are of the laboring classes completely 
unorganized, without unions of societies, they are the 
one class which has kept up and increased the stand- 
ard of wages. As a class they have made no claims, 
they have not appealed to the public, or to the poli- 
tician, but they have, nonetheless, increased their 
demands, and obtained their demands. This is 
rather a curious commentary upon organized labor. 
The servant class numbers something like one in 
forty of the total population. My only explanation 
is that, as they are the class coming most closely in 
contact with the ruling class, they have absorbed and 
used the methods of that class. They hold them- 
selves at a high value, assert that value, and wherever 
and whenever possible, take all they can get. It is 



b ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

done quietly, as a matter of right, and with a sort of 
subdued air of sanctity. This is the British way, an 
impressive and eminently successful way. At any 
rate, so far as the servants themselves are concerned, 
they may well laugh in their sleeves at the troubles 
of the trades-unions and other societies, which, with 
much noise, turmoil, strikes and boycotts, have not 
succeeded as well as they have in bettering their con- 
dition. The wages of servants have increased out of 
all proportion to the increase of wages in other occu- 
pations in the last fifteen years. 

Though I have written that they are unorganized 
as a class, in the sense in which the miners or the 
spinners are organized, they nmintain among them- 
selves distinctions and gradations as sharp as those 
of a Court. The house-keeper, the butler, the head 
coachman, the master's valet, and the mistress's 
maid, are the nobiHty and gentry of the servant's hall, 
while footmen, grooms, maids and the like are com- 
moners. To the average American these distinc- 
tions may be merely laughable. Let him come to 
England and keep house for a year and he will find 
them adamant. He can no more ignore them or over- 
ride them than he can alter the procedure in the House 
of Lords. If he accepts them, well and good; if not, 
he will have no servants. The butler and the house- 
keeper are spoken of by the other servants as " Mr.'* 
Jones and "Mrs." Brown, and the mistress's maid 
is "Miss," and woe be to the unlucky underling who 
forgets these prefixes ! At a large house party where 
there are many men servants and maids, they take 
the precedence of their particular master and mistress. 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS 7 

You smile at first, and then you realize that underly- 
ing the snobbishness, the petty dignities, is the na- 
tional love of orderliness, the desire for a cut-and- 
dried routine, the British contentment in having a fixed 
personal status. Those who have read Thackeray's 
novels, and his Yellowplush papers, have a not inac- 
curate, though a brightly colored picture of the Eng- 
lish servant class. Above all things, do not forget 
the most important factor of all, — they are all Eng- 
lish, they are all of the same race as their masters. 
This explains, if not everything, almost everything. 

But, like all good Americans, let us be moving, let 
us get on. Here we are at last in London! That 
yellow ball above the horizon, seen through this bitu- 
minous haze, is the sun — the sun sadly tarnished. 
Those little toy coaches and engines, are cars and 
locomotives. The noiseless gliding out, and gliding 
into the station, is the English way of running things. 
No shouting, no nervous snapping of watches, no 
shriek of whistle, no clanging of bell; a scarcely audi- 
ble whistle, and the thing is done. These people 
must know their business or somebody would be left 
behind, somebody would get into the wrong train; 
they do know their business. We are soon to find 
that this is the country of personal freedom, and 
also personal responsibility. You may do as you 
please unmolested, uncriticised, unreported, unpho- 
tographed, unheralded, unnoticed even, as in no 
other country in the world, but the moment you do 
what you ought not to please to do, from the police- 
man to the court, and thence to the jail, is a shorter 
road here than anywhere else. So much personal 



8 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

liberty is only possible where justice is swift, unprej- 
udiced, impartial, and sure. The lord, the million- 
aire, the drunkard and the snatch thief are treated 
the same — within the same six months a great finan- 
cial schemer and the son of a great nobleman were 
ushered behind the bars with almost as Httle cere- 
mony and as little delay as are required for the trial 
of a wife-beater or a burglar. Personal freedom has 
this serious responsibility: its misuse is promptly 
punished, and there is no escape, — they even behead 
a king on occasion. 

When we are in England we do, so far as our tem- 
peramental limitations permit, as the English do. 
We go to a private hotel, small, with a front door al- 
ways locked and only opened on demand, and we are 
ushered into our own apartment. For a week now, 
not another guest has revealed himself. Meals are 
served to each in his own rooms, and though there 
is a coffee-room, no one, apparently, uses it. The 
Englishman brings his home to his hotel. It is not 
a meeting-place, but, quite on the contrary, a place 
for personal privacy and seclusion. There are, of 
course, now in London, great caravansaries, but they 
are for the stranger and for the modernized English- 
man, the real John Bull abhors them. The rooms 
are damp, a small grate-fire mitigates the gloom of 
the sitting-room, but bedroom and dressing-room 
retain their damp-blanket atmosphere throughout 
our stay. A tin tub is brought in in the morning and 
evening, and you bathe as a protection from the cold. 
A sound rubbing with a coarse towel takes the place 
of a fire, or steam heat. No doubt many people die 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS 9 

in becoming accustomed to this method of keeping 
warm, but those who survive have conquered for 
themselves the greatest empire extant. 

The first days in the streets of London bring so 
many impressions that it is as confusing to remember 
them as to recall, in their proper order, the changes 
of a kaleidoscope. It is apparent that the men are 
heavier here than with us; apparent, too, that this 
is a land of men, ruled by men, obedient to the ways 
and comforts and prejudices of men, not women. 
Here the male bird has the briUiant plumage. The 
best of them, as one sees them in Piccadilly, in Bond 
Street, in St. James's Street, in the clubs, in the park 
on a Sunday after church, are fine-looking fellows, 
well set up and scrupulously well groomed and turned 
out. But the women! What hats, what clothes, 
what shoes, what colors, what amorphous figures. 
One hears of English economies, evidently they be- 
gin with the dress-maker's bill. Who permits that 
nice-looking girl to wear a white flannel skirt, a pur- 
ple jacket, and a fur hat with a bunch of small feath- 
ers sticking out of it at right angles? Here is an- 
other with an embroidered linen coat, and a bit of 
ermine fur, and a straw hat with flowers on it! The 
grotesque costumes of the women would make one 
stop to stare, were it not that they are so common 
one ceases at last to notice them. But their taste 
in dress is nothing new. When Queen Victoria came 
to the throne their tasteless vagaries of costume were 
noticeable. A well-dressed lady is described as wear- 
ing, in those days, "a blue satin robe, a black-violet 
mantlet lined with blue satin and trimmed with black 



10 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

lace, and an emerald-green hat, trimmed with blonde 
and roses, as well as ribbon and feathers"! 

The complexions of the English have often been 
exploited for our benefit. The damp climate and 
the exercise out-of-doors produce the red, they say. 
But on examination it proves to be not the red of 
the rose, but the red^ of raw beef, and often streaky 
and fibrous at that. The features are large and the 
faces high-colored, but it is not a delicate pink, it is 
a coarse red. At a distance, the effect is charming, 
bright, refreshing, but close to, often rather unpleas- 
ant. Here the features of the women, even the feat- 
ures of the beautiful women, are moulded; while the 
features of our beautiful American women are chis- 
elled. 

The shops wear the colors, so to speak, of the 
dominant sex. Those that most attract you have in 
their windows the paraphernalia of the male bird. 
Shops with guns, and folding seats to carry about 
when shooting, and everything pertaining to the 
sport in profusion; shops with windows draped with 
haberdashery; shops filled with leather and silver 
conveniences for men; shops with all sorts of hats for 
all sorts of climates for men's wear; shops with har- 
ness, shops with whips, shops with saddles, shops 
with tobacco, endless shops with potables of all kinds 
from those vintages of '47, '64, '84, '99, and 1900, for 
the particular imbiber, to those with the everlasting 
" Bitter" and " Gin," enjoyed by the nomadic drinker 
with only pennies on his person and no credit. Should 
you take the trouble to count you would find that the 
purveyors to masculine taste largely predominate. 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS n 

The men dress, the women are clothed, and the shops 
are provided accordingly. 

The Englishwoman pretends that the French- 
woman and the American woman are overdressed, 
inappropriately dressed. This, however, is only a 
salve to her feelings, and is acquiesced in by her lord 
for reasons of economy. In the country, in stout 
boots, nondescript hats, and cheap flannel and tweed, 
the Englishwoman is properly clothed because such 
costumes are cheap; but in town she is awkwardly 
clothed because well-fitting clothes of fine material 
are expensive, and the Englishwoman is not given 
her appropriate share of the income for purposes of 
personal adornment. That is the truth of the mat- 
ter, that and the national all-pervasive lack of taste, 
which accounts for the odd, often comical appearance 
of women in London. 

It might imperil the faith of the reader in these im- 
pressions, were one to give facts in this connection; 
if one, that is to say, were to give the figures of 
amounts allowed to certain women, wives, sisters, 
daughters, in certain families to dress on. Just as 
our women are so often wickedly and grotesquely 
extravagant in their expenditure, so, here, such mat- 
ters are on a scale that can only be called mean. 
Very often facts, statements from real life are flouted 
as isolated, exaggerated and hence untrue to life. 
Often enough, therefore, a general impression car- 
ries more weight, and is, in truth, more valuable. 
This is the case in this particular instance as in many 
others. After an experience of England and the 
English covering some thirty odd years, I could easily 



12 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

quote example after example of the pittances allowed 
Englishwomen for their personal expenditure. Is 
it not, perhaps, easier and surer, after all, to develop 
particular instances from general lines of civiliza- 
tion? This England has become the great Empire 
she is because she is a man's country; this fact at any 
rate will protrude itself, make itself unmistakable at 
every turn as we go on, and the expenditures per- 
mitted to the women are merely one of the minor 
results of this. 

To those who have given some attention to gas- 
tronomies either for the stomach's or the pocket's 
sake, the food provided here is almost more than a 
first impression, it is a daily, thrice daily, bugbear. 
Here, again, it is surely the masculine stomach that 
dictates. Meat, meat, meat, and no alleviation. 
The vegetables are few, and even they, as Heine — 
how Heine must have suffered in England — phrased 
it, "are boiled in water, and then put upon the table 
just as God made them!'' It is true that one may 
go to the expensive restaurants, the Ritz, the Carl- 
ton, the Savoy and others, and live daintily enough, 
but that is not England, that is a foreign country with 
which we have nothing to do. During the past two 
weeks, I have dined at our own private hotel, — which, 
by the way, it is fair to the student to say, is a first- 
rate one in the fashionable West End district — at 
the country house of a distinguished peer of the realm 
and at a middle-class restaurant in the Strand. At 
all of these meat predominated. At his lordship's 
it is needless to say, there were fruits, and salads, and 
vegetables from his own gardens, and there was such 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS 13 

variety that a guest might please himself, and must 
have been overcritical not to dine well whatever his 
tastes; but the eternal round of eggs, bacon, sole, 
beef, mutton, ham, tongue and chicken, with po- 
tatoes, and cabbage, and cheese, is the familiar diet 
of the Englishman. Nor does he complain. He wants 
nothing else. He demands just this bill-of-fare. I 
have heard at Julien's in Paris, where, when Julien 
himself presides over your meal, you dine completely, 
the Englishman sighing for some good plain beef or 
mutton. He likes it, it agrees with him, he sighs for 
it when he has been separated from it, and those who 
survive this sanguinary flesh diet are, it must be ad- 
mitted, splendid animals indeed. 

"Was ever Tartar fierce or cruel, 
'"Jpon the strength of water gruel? 
But who can stand his raging force, 
When first he rides then eats his horse!'* 

This damp, cool climate, where, as King Charles 
said, one can be out-of-doors and enjoy being out- 
of-doors more days in the year than in any other coun- 
try in the world, is a climate where the warmly dressed, 
agreeably exercising, comfortably housed male flour- 
ishes like a green bay-tree. Let it be borne in mind 
constantly that these pages are not written in criti- 
cism — that is poor business for any man, most of 
all for a happy man who numbers many Englishmen 
among his friends — but as a study. Who is this 
Englishman ? what is he ? why is he ? where and how 
does he live? above all, why has he conquered the 
world ? how much longer will he be supreme ? — those 



14 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

are the questions of interest. We are noting facts 
not because they are pleasant or unpleasant, not be- 
cause they fit with some theory of our own, but be- 
cause they are to light the road we propose to travel 
among these people. 

It is this climate, seldom very hot, seldom very 
cold, rarely very bright, which lends itself better than 
any other to exercise out-of-doors, which makes fuel 
of a bulky and beefy sort necessary. No man in 
America, not even a coal heaver could live the year 
round on the food and drink which are the daily 
dietary of many men here; mostly m^n, it is true, who 
spend much time out-of-doors, shooting, fishing, hunt- 
ing, golfing and the like. Eggs and bacon and sole 
with tea or coffee for breakfast. A hot dish of meat 
and potatoes, vegetable marrow, cabbage, celery, all 
boiled, or cold meat, salad and cheese, with beer or 
whiskey and soda, and a glass of port to follow for 
luncheon. Soup, generally very poor, fish, meat, 
an entree often of meat, a sweet, cheese and fruit for 
dinner, with champagne, whiskey and soda or a light 
wine according to taste, again with port to follow, 
this bill-of-fare is a fair average diet. Added to by 
the rich, subtracted from by the poor, until it is the 
best of good living at the table of a Rothschild, be- 
cause there is nothing so difficult in all the realm of 
cookery as plain cooking; or the most awfully un- 
wholesome fodder at the table of the poor man, be- 
cause these elements that lend themselves to the most 
wholesome diet, lend themselves also to the most un- 
wholesome. 

Look at the people who swarm the streets to 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS 15 

see the Lord Mayor's Show, and where will you 
see a more pitiable sight. These beef-eating, port- 
drinking fellows in Piccadilly, exercised, scrubbed, 
groomed, they are well enough to be sure; but this 
other side of the shield is distressing to look at. Poor, 
stunted, bad-complexioned, shabbily dressed, ill- 
featured are these pork-eating, gin-drinking denizens 
of the East End. Crowds I have seen in America, in 
Mexico, and in most of the great cities of Europe — 
of India and China I know nothing. Nowhere is 
there such squalor, such pinching poverty, so many 
undersized, so many plainly and revoltingly diseased, 
so much human rottenness as here. This is what the 
climate, the food, and the drink, and man's rule of 
the weaker to the wall, accomplish for the weak. 

"The good old rule, the simple plan, 
That they should take who have the power, 
And they should keep who can." 

But more of this at another time. It is one of Eng- 
land's ugly problems and deserves a chapter to itself. 
What an orderly crowd it is! Call it by all the bad 
names you will, and there remains this characteristic 
of law-abidingness which has been to me for many 
years, and is still, a ceaseless source of wonder. See 
them at the great race on the Epsom Downs on Derby 
Day. As you look from your coach top you see a 
black mass of people. No sign of a track, no sign of 
a race. A bell rings, two or three policemen on horse- 
back, half a dozen more on foot, begin moving along 
the track, and this enormous crowd melts aside, 



i6 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

makes a lane; the horses come out, dash away, the 
race is run, and back the people swarm again. The 
same at the Lord Mayor's Show. A few policemen 
begin clearing the middle of Fleet Street — a narrow 
street at best. Then mounted police, four abreast, 
not a word said, scarcely a gesture; no clubs, no noise, 
a lane is made through these people packed together, 
without shoving, pushing, elbowing, cursing or angry 
words, and here comes the procession. I have walked 
these streets now, on and off, for many years and at 
all hours of the day and night, and I cannot remem- 
ber being pushed, shoved, shouldered, or elbowed. 
It is marvellous. So, too, I have driven through these 
streets, one, two and four horses, many and many a 
time, and each time with renewed admiration, not 
only for the admirable driving but for the good hu- 
mor, the give and take, the fair play, the intuitive 
*ind universal willingness to give every fellow his 
fair chance and his rights. If that crowd in the City 
is incomparably and uncompromisingly unpleasant 
to look at, it is none the less permeated with the na- 
tional gift for law and order and fair play. 

It is not a dull crowd. There are wags amongst 
them, and much appreciation of their humor. In 
this particular procession the various King Edwards 
appeared in appropriate costume, and with attend- 
ants in the trappings of their time. As Edward the 
Confessor appears some one says: "'Ello Eddie, you 
don't seem to 'ave changed much!" and there is a 
roar of appreciation at this chaff, and Eddie looks 
embarrassed enough in spite of his big horse, and his 
magnificent followers. "Oh, Oi soi, 'is beard and 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS 17 

'air don't match!" greets the appearance of another 
Edward, and again the crowd laughs good-naturedly. 
But for forty minutes, while the procession passes, 
and for hours before and hours after, this enormous 
crowd manages itself. Indeed, it is to be doubted 
whether, were there no policemen in the streets, these 
people would not of themselves have made way and 
given the new Lord Mayor fair play and a clear 
passage. 

There is one poHce patrolman to every 496 inhab- 
itants of London; one to every 547 in New York; 
one to every 485 in Washington; one to every 509 in 
Boston; one to every 449 in Liverpool; one to every 
330 in Dublin; one to every 340 in Berlin; one to every 
184 in St. Petersburg; one to every 175 in Lisbon. 
When one considers the enormous area of London, 
and the universally acknowledged success of their 
daily dealings with crowds and with the traffic, and 
the comparative comfort and safety of people in this 
town, so large that it is almost a nation in itself, one 
is driven to the conclusion that the people themselves 
have the root of orderliness and fair play in them. 

How is it in quite another social sphere ? At New- 
market in the members' stand, walking from the stand 
to the paddock, I see a short, heavily built man of 
sixty odd, with gray beard and moustache, a fine 
aquihne nose, clear eyes, a cigar in his mouth, dressed 
in a brown bowler hat and a formless brown over- 
coat. It is the King. The King of that crowd in 
Fleet Street. The King of that crowd at Epsom. 
The King of these quiet people here in the paddock 
at Newmarket. No one stares, points, whispers, no 



i8 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

one even looks. He, too, is given fair play, a chance 
with other English gentlemen to enjoy himself. He 
does not meddle with them, they do not meddle with 
him. If it is necessary to have a row, as has hap- 
pened when there was undue meddling on either side, 
it is fought out and settled. In the meantime, fair 
play, and give every fellow a chance, from the King 
to the coster-monger. As an American I take off my 
hat. I should take off my hat to this King, any way. 
He is the cheapest investment and the most valuable 
asset England has to-day. Whenever he has taken 
a part in national affairs it has been for the glory, the 
peace and prosperity of his country. When he med- 
dles it is not to advertise himself, not for the humilia- 
tion and undoing of his country, but for her honor. 
When one remembers that there is no written con- 
stitution here, no infallible or inviolable body of law, 
but that each emergency is met by common-sense and 
solved by the application of a kind of working worldly 
wisdom, one admires the more the calm way in which 
each, from the highest to the lowest, submits, is satis- 
fied, and goes his way. The House of Lords is the 
highest court of appeal, and though nowadays law 
lords are created who do the legal work of the House 
of Lords, this was not always the case. These he- 
reditary rulers were supposed by instinct, or divine 
grace, or what not, to be capable of passing judgment 
upon the most intricate legal questions. One sees 
how they have been trained for centuries to meet and 
settle disputes, big and little, between themselves at 
Englishmen, and between themselves as a nation, 
and other nations, along these same lines. 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS 19 

Sitting on the bench at Bow Street with the Mag- 
istrate, I listened all one morning to his disposal of 
the cases that came before him. It seemed to me 
when I left that I had known beforehand what would 
happen. Quarrelsome women and men, mostly 
through drink; men and children accused of begging; 
a few cases of assault or resistance to the constable; 
all of them, hour after hour, dealt with in a good- 
tempered paternal sort of way, with appeals to their 
own sense of what was right. Only the cases where 
there had been resistance to the constable, the con- 
stable who represents British law and order, then 
hard labor and wholesome punishment. Always the 
same from the King to Bow Street. How can we live 
together amicably, with the utmost freedom for each 
one? that is the problem. The practical result is 
— you see it, if you have eyes, everywhere you go — 
a success. The machinery that brings it about seems 
from a theoretical point of view ill adapted to its pur- 
pose, but somehow there is a quality in the people 
themselves that permits a working basis. 

I have never forgotten an almost grotesque ex- 
ample of this method of depending upon the people 
themselves to take care of themselves and to play fair. 
It was at a cricket-match. My daughter and I 
walked round to the entrance to the reserved seats 
stand. I asked for two seats. "Where would you 
like them, sir?" asked the attendant. He saw that 
I hesitated, and said, " Go in and see where you would 
like to sit, come back and tell me the numbers of the 
seats you have chosen, and I will give them to you!" 
I accordingly went in and chose my seats and walked 



20 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

back and received and paid for my tickets. This 
was an important cricket-match. There were some 
thirty or forty people behind me waiting to buy tick- 
ets, there were perhaps half a dozen inside choosing 
their seats, and the attendant was calmly running over 
his book of tickets, pulling out the numbers called for 
by those, myself among the number, who had found 
the numbers of the seats they wanted. There was 
no excitement or haste on the part of anybody; no- 
body grumbled, nobody seemed dissatisfied with this 
ridiculously slow and cumbersome machinery. On 
the contrary, because it did work with these law-abid- 
ing people everybody was the better off. This inci- 
dent remains fixed in my memory as unique. Im- 
agine a crowd at a race-course in France treated in 
this way. Picture the preposterousness of treating 
an American crowd at a base-ball game in this way. 
In either case there would be pushing and crowding, 
bad language and appeals to Heaven or to other 
lower powers to blast and destroy a management 
which sanctioned such methods. There is much 
talk and writing these days of the danger to this 
Empire from Germany and other powers. Much is 
written of English decadence along certain lines. I 
expect to show in other pages that there are legitimate 
reasons for such statements, but if I were their enemy 
I should always be cautious in attacking the English 
for that one reason, if for no other. They know how 
to take care of themselves as do no other people; and 
they seem to muddle along with the old stage-coach 
methods about as fast as do others with the latest 
thing in locomotive engines. 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS 21 

I have watched for hours at a time the crowds 
which came by the hundred thousand to support or 
to protest against the Licensing Bill — the imper- 
turbable policeman, the docility of the people, the 
coming and going through the streets, the assembling 
in Hyde Park, all with a smoothness and lack of 
trouble of a trained army. Coming from Mars — 
or from Paris, the spectator would say: these people 
have been trained for months to march in procession, 
to assemble, to disperse, to re-assemble and depart. 
But they have not been so trained. It is the out- 
standing characteristic of the race. No wonder the 
average Englishman cannot be terrified, or even 
aroused, to take decent precautions against invasion. 
They do not need the training of other peoples. They 
are already trained. When I see this quality of the 
race I smile to think what would become of a hundred 
or two hundred thousand Germans landed on these 
shores, with their machine-like methods, their lack 
of initiative, and their dependence upon a bureau- 
cracy. They would be swallowed up, or dispersed 
like chaff. These Saxons would dispose of them as 
they disposed of the Danes. The old street song of 
the Jingo days was not mere bluster. It had the 
heart of the philosophy of the race in it: 

"We don't want to fight 
But, by Jingo, if we do," 

etc., etc. This is true. They are not quarrelsome, 
not oversensitive, not inclined to carry chips on their 
shoulders, or to call attention to the length of their 



22 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

coat tails as offering an opportunity to any who dare 
to tread upon them, but they are a nasty lot to deal 
with once the row is on. Perhaps it is because they 
realize, as Hobbes has said, that the people do not 
flourish in a monarchy because one man has a right 
to rule them, but because they obey him; or perhaps 
it is because they are not a mixed race, but of that at 
another time. 

The newspapers, being the eyes and ears of the 
nation, are apparently unduly impressed by dis- 
orderliness in other countries, particularly in Amer- 
ica. Each morning and evening the American news 
consists largely of the chronicling of murders, rail- 
way disasters, divorces, fires, strikes, suicides, trials 
in the law courts, and the like. No doubt there are 
still people in provincial English towns who look upon 
the American as half horse, half alligator, with a dash 
of earthquake. But in the last two weeks in Eng- 
land, I note a bad railway accident, eighteen killed 
and injured; a disaster in a mine, seven men killed; 
two women kidnapped right here in London; three 
murders in broad daylight; a noble lord killed in the 
hunting field; a noble lord throws himself out of a 
window and kills himself; another noble lord appears 
as co-respondent in the divorce court, and is found 
guilty; fog so dense one evening that there are several 
accidents to the traffic; a distinguished naval ofl&cer 
signals a humorous but nonetheless discourteous 
message to one of his ships which brings down upon 
him a severe reprimand from the admiral of the fleet, 
and so on, and so on. I note these merely to reas- 
sure myself. Evidently things go wrong here some- 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS 23 

times as elsewhere in the world, but less is made of 
them. The newspapers pass over these incidents 
lightly, and with little comment. They are not even 
a nine days* wonder as with us. The profound sense 
of personal freedom, and the jealousy with which it 
is guarded and protected, does not permit the inter- 
ference of newspaper reporters in private affairs. 
Hence these matters cannot be exploited, and dram- 
atized, in epigrammatic paragraphs. There are 
fewer journals dedicated to the putrid of the upper 
circles, wherein, as Meredith says, "initials raise 
sewer lamps, and Asmodeus lifts a roof, leering hid- 
eously." There would be too much horse- whipping 
here to make blackmail journalism profitable. There 
is, too, among the best people, an almost morbid dis- 
like of publicity. This is due to the fact that, for 
centuries, only mountebanks, quacks, people with 
something to sell, public mummers, and the like, ad- 
vertised themselves, or for that matter, do so now. 
Most of the advertising of people in America, put- 
ting their photographs in the papers and the like, is 
bought and paid for in more or less roundabout 
ways, by the people themselves. So I am told by 
journalists who ought to know. We deem it neces- 
sary to be known, to keep ourselves before the public ; 
the men think it good business and pay for it as for 
any other advertising; the women from Eve-old van- 
ity think the same, and we are only just beginning to 
realize that this is letting Asmodeus in at the front 
door. 

But this ample protection of each one in his per- 
sonal liberty of action and speech has its dark side. 



24 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

Where a sense of propriety on the one hand, and the 
punishment, ready to hand, of social ostracism on 
the other, prevail, things go well enough. There 
are, however, millions who care nothing for propriety, 
and who already have no social status, and conse- 
quently the traffic in women and drink goes on in 
London in an unblushing, embarrassing, and revolt- 
ing manner. Only here in London does one see, or 
rather is it held under your nose, the most shameless 
parading of harlotry. The streets of the West End 
after dusk, and some of the restaurants at supper 
time, are simply overrun with hawkers of their own 
daubed but tarnished charms. New York, Paris, 
Vienna, Madrid, Berlin, City of Mexico, I know them 
all. In them all vice is more or less secluded, 
abashed, kept to one side by the police, not so here. 
It may parade itself, walk the streets, flaunt itself, to 
receive the same protection as any other pedestrian. 
So, too, may one drink — men, women, and even 
children — at almost every corner. What the rich 
man does, the poor man may do as well; what the 
virtuous woman does, the strumpet may do, too, so 
long as the law is not violated. Protection for all 
alike, liberty for all alike, and, be it said, punishment 
and the cold neutrality of impartial justice, for all 
alike. In Hyde Park, almost every day of the year, 
particularly on Sundays, you may see knots of people 
gathered about a speaker. Any man or woman who 
will, may deliver himself or herself of opinions there, 
while the police keep order. What an excellent and 
common-sense safety-valve ! If it is hard to convince, 
and convert people to the right and true by oratory, 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS 25 

one can safely leave oratory to do its worst for what 
is wrong and foolish. 

No one is permitted to incite to violence, but any 
one may make the attempt to weave his thoughts, 
his prejudices, his dreams, his grievances, into the 
ready-made garments that he believes would keep us 
all alike warm; any one too may reply, and point out 
the unevenness of the texture; that it is shoddy, that 
the garment does not fit. I have attended scores 
of these meetings, listened to the orator, the discus- 
sions, and the refutations, and once I took a hand 
myself; and beg to acknowledge that I received fair 
play and my share of the applause. These free evap- 
orations of the gaseous elements of the cranium 
must save many explosions. A man soon discovers 
that governing the whole country is not easy, when 
to influence even a handful of those he feels ought 
to be sympathetic is so difficult. 

In this damp, chill climate, in these gloomy streets, 
the poor and the vicious seem more sodden and more 
brutal, and vice more unappetizing than elsewhere. 
The gloom and ponderousness of this huge grimy 
city of London are reflected in the faces and the man- 
ners of the submerged and semi-submerged part of 
the population. One gets here, more than elsewhere, 
an early and indelible impression of the fearful strug- 
gle to survive. It would seem that one must be more 
fit here to keep out the damp and the cold, to eat the 
heavy food, to struggle against, and to keep oneself 
against, the huge mass of people centred here. The 
very bulk of the place looms the larger, and is the 
more terrifying becau'^e it is so much of the time in 



26 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

semi-darkness; and to the weak and unarmed it must 
appeal as a great crushing, dark, amorphous monster. 
Nor am I altogether wrong in supposing that these 
people merely look weak and uncared for. They are, 
as a matter of fact, of anything but a robust type. 
The following table, covering the twelvemonth ended 
September 30, 1907, gives us a commentary upon the 
physical condition of the men offering themselves as 
recruits for the regular army: 

REJECTED 
OFFERED FOR 

TOWN FOR PHYSICAL 

ENLISTMENT REASONS 

London 20,975 8,806 

Birmingham 1,858 1,084 

Manchester 2,523 1,821 

Sheffield 1,031 363 

Leeds 791 452 

Newcastle 1,493 1,046 

Sunderland 776 282 

Glasgow 2,905 1,135 

Dundee 956 680 

Edinburgh 1,500 628 

These men were young men, and men with a taste 
for outdoor life. Nor is the standard itself very high 
which they are called upon to pass. 

On the other hand, those who survive, those who 
are well armed and in control, are the more confident 
and proud. Those who are in the saddle in England 
ride a very fine horse, there is no doubt of that. Eng- 
land and the English have been dominant in the affairs 
of men for just about a century, or since the Napole- 
onic wars. It is hardly to be expected that having 
been so long dominant they should not be domineer- 
ing. This expresses itself in the best Englishmen 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS 27 

by an easy and natural attitude of confidence and re- 
pose; but in the second and third rate Englishman, 
by an attitude of provincial bumptiousness and im- 
pudence unequalled in the world. This is what has 
made the Englishman the most unpopular, one may 
say the most generally disliked, of men. The Ger- 
mans and the Irish hate him; the French ridicule and 
distrust him; the average American takes his awk- 
wardness, or what Carlyle once called "his pot- 
bellied equanimity," for patronage, giving him little 
credit for what is often mere shyness, and is forever 
irritated by him, now that he is too big to be bothered 
by him as a bully. His power, his stabihty, his hon- 
esty have won him allies and make allies for him to- 
day, but he has no friends. It would be a sad day 
for the Lion if he lost his teeth and claws. The real 
attitude of other nations toward him would surprise 
him. It is hard to be dominant and not to be dom- 
ineering, and only the very first-rate Englishmen es- 
cape the temptation; and here, as everywhere else, 
the first-rate are in a large minority. It is the mass 
of men who make the composite photograph's main 
lineaments for the English nation's likeness, as must 
be the case with other peoples. And the mass of 
English people do not make themselves agreeable to 
other people; oftener than not they seem to pride 
themselves upon a studied erinaceous attitude toward 
all the world. The result of such behavior needs no 
chronicling by me. It is evident enough. It is noted 
here as an impression, deserving a place amongst 
first impressions, because it is accountable for much 
that is to follow. 



28 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

It is fair, however, to add in this connectign, that 
there are two reasons for this fish-like social attitude 
of the Englishman. In the first place, his ner\'es are 
not on the surface, as with us, and as is the case with 
all the Latin races. He is not intentionally, but con- 
stitutionally, stolid. His food and his climate have 
much to do with this. He is not effusive, not sym- 
pathetic, because he is not made that way. Here the 
mind frets not the body. He is not easily disturbed 
or moved. This is not a pose, it is a fact. He does 
not shrink from display or warmth of manner, so 
much as that they are lacking in his composition. I 
dined on one occasion with a party of gentlemen met 
to say good-bye to a friend of all of them, who was 
off for a long journey in the East. His health was 
drunk, each one shook him by the hand, and wished 
him a pleasant journey; they were not to see him for 
a year or two, but had I not known, I should not have 
guessed that he was leaving these dozen friends for a 
long absence. Doubtless his friends were as hearty 
in their good wishes and as loath to lose him as other 
men in other climes would have been, but there was 
little evidence of it. That is their way. 

Another reason for the seeming lack of spontaneity 
in their manner is their grounded horror of interfering 
in other people's business. This is carried to a point 
almost beyond belief. Men who have belonged to 
the same club for years know nothing of one another's 
private affairs. 

''I didn't know he was married!" said a friend to 
me one night at dinner, of a common friend, whom 
we had both known for years. A man's intimate 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS 29 

friends for years, men he has known at school, at the 
club, in the army, are often quite unknown to, or by, 
his wife. Not that any man, anywhere, cares to in- 
troduce all his acquaintances into his home; but here 
the arrangement of a man's life, quite apart from his 
home-life is often carried to an extreme. 

They avoid the smallest suspicion of even curi- 
osity about one another's affairs or private concerns. 
It is considered a monstrous indiscretion even to show 
any interest in the affairs of a man who has not first 
invited you to an interest therein. The result is a 
delightful freedom from prying, or questioning, but 
at the same time there is, in consequence, an entire 
lack of ease and vivacity. It is necessarily only the 
bare surface of things that one may touch upon, 
where each one is wrapping himself in a mantle of 
mental aloofness. Hence the English are much given 
to the axiomata media in conversation, and much 
given to talking not at all when they do not feel like 
it. They feel under no obligation to be entertain- 
ers or entertaining. 

England, as a whole, has little patience with the 
virtues not easily recognized by the community 
as a whole. Originality is neither sought nor com- 
mended. The man who expresses and represents the 
community is the valued man. The Mills and Spen- 
cers, and Merediths and Bagehots, of whom the 
great mass of the English even now know nothing 
and care less, the Byrons and Shelleys, they willingly 
let die. England treats her men of wayward genius 
as a hen treats the unexpectedly hatched duckling. 
She is amazed to find herself responsible for an ani- 



30 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

mal which prefers the water to the land; but once it 
actually takes to the water, her responsibility ceases. 
If the hen were English, and could talk, it would say: 
" Well, that fellow is an awful ass, and too clever by 
half!" When, therefore, they come in contact with 
French, Germans, Americans, Italians, Irish, or even 
their own breed from Canada or Australia, they have 
nothing to say to them, no sympathy with them, no 
comprehension of them, and not the least wish in the 
world to understand them, unless there is something 
tangible and valuable to be got out of it. 

If I have heard it once from my compatriots I have 
heard it an hundred times, this dissatisfaction and 
even irritation at the Englishman's indifference. 
The American cannot understand that this chilli- 
ness is not in the least assumed. It is just as much 
a part of the Englishman as his speech. He does 
not care for strangers, particularly foreigners, and he 
very seldom pretends to. Our enthusiastic and in- 
discriminating hospitality to foreigners, especially to 
Englishmen and Englishwomen, is simply looked 
upon by them as an acknowledgment of their su- 
periority. Some day we shall realize this, and be- 
come more careful, but it is wonderful that an in- 
telligent race like the Americans should take the 
cuffing and snubbing they get for their pains, whether 
at home or as Americans domiciled in England, not 
even now realizing that the Englishmen care noth- 
ing about them unless they come bearing gifts. But 
there is no hypocrisy about it. The Englishman 
does not treat foreigners that way, and he does not 
in the least understand why we do so. 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS 31 

There is never an international boat-race or affair 
of any kind but what there are heart-burnings on the 
part of the Americans; while the Englishman, who has 
been hospitable in his fashion, remains serenely un- 
conscious that he has not done all that was expected of 
him. He simply does not understand our enthusi- 
astic hospitality — and, be it said, if he is a "boun- 
der," laughs at us for it behind our backs — and 
would not dream of practising it if they did. In the 
case of the Englishman it is not a theory, it is a con- 
dition of mind and body, a heritage of social train- 
ing, for which he is in no sense to be blamed. If we 
do not like it, we can leave it alone, but it is absurd 
to be irritated. Americans who have become domi- 
ciled in England, who give lavishly to charities, who 
entertain luxuriously, would be surprised to know 
the attitude of mind of the average Englishman in 
regard to them. He looks upon them first as people 
who have recognized his superiority and therefore 
prefer his society; but secondly, and always, as rene- 
gades, as people who have shirked their duty as 
Americans. This is typical of the Englishman's 
make-up; he is complacently sure of himself, he is 
condescendingly generous in the acceptance of all 
forms of sport, amusement, and hospitality offered 
by his American host, but he believes religiously in 
doing one's duty, and he knows very well that run- 
aways cannot be doing their duty, even if it take the 
form of providing entertainment for their adopted 
countrymen. I should be sorry in closing this chap- 
ter if I have not made it clear that I am offering ex- 
planations, not criticisms. Few criticisms, and no 



32 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

superficial criticisms, are of the least value; while, 
perhaps, an explanation, especially if it is by way of 
being a discovery, may soothe, even if it does not en- 
tirely satisfy. Nor should the last word on this par- 
ticular subject go without the personal testimony of 
the writer, which, no doubt, is shared by many others, 
that there is no kindlier, no more hospitable and no 
pleasanter comrade than the Englishman, once one 
is upon a footing of intimacy with him. Then he 
accepts you just as naturally as he does not accept 
the stranger. 



II 

WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 

IF this question: Who are the English? were asked 
either of the average Englishman, or of the av- 
erage American visitor to England, the answer 
would probably be both inaccurate and confusing. 
The average Englishman knows little of the origins of 
his race, and is not of the mental make-up that sets 
much store by such matters in any case; and the 
American pays little heed to anything except to what 
comes directly under his notice as he travels about 
to and from London as his centre. 

London itself is a city of some seven million six 
hundred odd thousand inhabitants. It is a small 
nation in itself. The total population of the King- 
dom of Great Britain and Ireland is only 43,660,000 
(1906). But London is not England. The United 
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is not Eng- 
land, with its total area of 121,000 square miles. No, 
what the world knows as England is the British Em- 
pire, which includes the above, and, in addition, some 
11,400,000 square miles, and a population of about 
410,000,000. The known surface of the globe is es- 
timated at about 55,000,000 square miles — its total 
population is believed to be about 1,800,000,000. 
The British Empire, therefore, occupies more than 



34 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

one-fifth of the earth's surface, and its population is 
also more than one-fifth, or about twenty- two per 
cent of the inhabitants of the globe. 

That is England! In Asia they have a population 
of some 310,000,000; in Africa, a population of some 
31,000,000; in America, a population of some 6,- 
000,000; in the West Indies, some 2,000,000; in Aus- 
tralasia, some 5,500,000, and so on. When you walk 
the streets of London, therefore, you are in the capi- 
tal of something over one-fifth of the world. These 
gentlemen in clubs, and offices, and in the streets, are 
the masters of the world. There must be a great 
many of them, and they must be very wonderful men, 
one says to oneself. No, the population of Great 
Britain and Ireland is, as we have seen, only about 
43j5oo,ooo, and what of them? 

It is stated on trustworthy authority that the ag- 
gregate income of these 43,000,000 of people is $8,- 
550,000,000. Of this total, 1,250,000 people have 
$2,925,000,000, these are the rich; 3,750,000 people 
have $1,225,000,000, these are the comfortable class; 
the other 38,000,000 have $4,400,000,000, to divide, 
and if we do the dividing for them, we see that these 
38,000,000 have nearly one hundred and sixteen dol- 
lars apiece. Not a large income by any means. But 
we are not socialists, these figures are not put down 
here to bolster any argument for or against the dis- 
tribution of wealth, but to call attention to quite an- 
other matter. It is evident from these figures that we 
may deduct 38,000,000 from the 43,000,000 of popu- 
lation and still have in the 5,000,000 that remain the 
sum total of those who do the real governing, the 



WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 35 

real ruling, of this enormous Empire. The other 
38,000,000, with their average income of $116, have 
in all probability neither leisure nor ability to look 
after anybody but themselves, and they even do that 
precariously. We may go still further, and say that 
out of these 5,000,000 certainly not more than 1,000,- 

000 are male adults. I know very well the admirable 
phrase of Walter Bagehot that " there are lies, damned 
hes, and statistics"; but I may claim for this analysis 
that it is a matter of facts, and not of statistics. It 
requires no juggling with figures, no poetic exaggera- 
tion for the petty purpose of making a point, to ar- 
rive at this rather startling conclusion: that about 
1,000,000 Englishmen of the ruling class control one- 
fifth of the known surface of the globe, and one in 
every five of all the inhabitants thereof. 

Out of the various wars and invasions of the island 
of Great Britain, from the time of Caesar's first land- 
ing in 55 B.C., there have percolated down a milliont 
men who rule the world. 

This is sufficiently interesting to make it worth 
while to find out who these Englishmen are. We 
can, any and all of us, make our notes about them as 
we see them, here and now. According as our eyes 
differ, our tastes differ, our education and experience 
differ, we come to different conclusions. Personally, 

1 am inclined to think that the Englishman is an ac- 
quired taste, but for the moment that is neither here 
nor there. When any comparatively small number 
of men come to play such a role as this in the world, 
one must begin further back to study them. This is 
not a sociological or psychological freak, this main- 



36 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

tenance of superiority over the world — not a matter 
that can be explained by snippity chapters written 
at short range about the Englishman's religion, his 
Parliament, his clubs, his home-life, his sports, his 
clothes, and so on, indefinitely. These are merely 
the outside trappings, which are interesting enough 
in their way and well worthy of the reporter and his 
camera, because there are plenty of people about 
who only want to know what the great man looks 
like, and what he smokes, and what he drinks, and 
whether he wears a turn-down collar or not — and 
some of them, perchance, will make themselves great 
in his likeness by copying his wardrobe, his diet, and 
his potables. 

But we are so superficial as to believe that in these 
two thousand years, since Caesar's day, there must 
be, here and there, interesting and important docu- 
ments dealing with the origins, the ancestry, the 
lineage, and training of this superb band of a mill- 
ion men who hold the world in their hands. 

We know the misty moist island in which they have 
lived all this time. We know that even Tacitus wrote 
that its climate was repulsive because of its rains and 
continual mists. Caesar and his Romans did not go 
there for a holiday om account of the charms of the 
climate. No Roman, of those days, or these, would 
choose this island as a place of residence. The 
Roman invasion was merely to control the resident 
Britons, and to prevent their sending aid to the Gauls 
who were fighting Rome. The Romans stayed there 
for three hundred and fifty years. They built two 
great walls across the land to check the invasions of 



WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 37 

the Britons; they built roads for the passage of the 
legions; they constructed intrenched camps, which are 
the origin of many of the names of places ending in 
cester, or Chester^ from the Latin word castrum, and 
when the legions were called away in 408 A.D. to 
check the invasion of the Barbarians on the Conti- 
nent, they left the island as British as it was before, 
with no trace of their language, their customs, or their 
laws. Though both English and American juris- 
prudence is based upon Roman law, this came later. 
England is not, therefore, in any sense Roman. 

These Britons of Caesar's time were a mixed race 
of Iberian stock — Iberian meaning southwestern 
Europe — at the present time the Basque is the last 
and best representative. But as there is no Roman, 
so there is no Britain, or very little, in the English 
ancestry. From northwestern Germany came Sax- 
ons, Engles, and Jutes who, from time to time, in- 
vaded the England of the Briton, and finally crowded 
him out. By 829 the Germanic tribes had poured in, 
and completely invested England, or what we now 
know as England. But of these tribes the one that 
really made the England of to-day, the one from which 
England, and the English, get their chief character- 
istics, was the tribe of the Saxons. Sussex, Essex, 
Middlesex, the familiar names of English counties, 
are nothing more nor less than South Saxony, East 
Saxony, and Middle Saxony. They were not of the 
marauding or piratical type. They came in the first 
instance as companions of their neighbors the Jutes. 
But while the Jutes came for adventure and for booty, 
the Saxons came because they wanted land to set- 



38 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

tie on. They came because their own country was 
becoming overcrowded. They were an agricultural 
people of the peasant class. There was no trace of 
feudalism among them. They were land-owners with 
equal rights, who gradually pushed their way over 
the land, taking more and more territory; beating 
back the Britons, and securely occupying the terri- 
tory they had won. The conquered Britons finally 
fled to the Welsh mountains where some of them re- 
mained, while others passed over in large numbers 
to the other side of the Channel to Armorica, and the 
Brittany of to-day is the land of this body of exiles 
from England. 

These Saxons were independent farmers; they ac- 
knowledged no chief, no king, and when they were 
called upon to fight together, they answered the call 
of the leader or answered it not as they chose. When 
King Alfred called upon them the first time to join 
him in driving out the Danes, they refused to aid 
him. Finally they came to his aid, but at a time of 
their own choosing. When they came together to 
discuss questions of common and general interest, 
their meeting or assembly was not one of subjects, 
or followers, but of freemen. They had apparently 
little taste for public meetings, and those of them who 
were much occupied with their own estates and their 
own affairs, got into the way of staying away alto- 
gether. Those who had leisure, or talent for such 
matters, went. Finally what was then known as the 
Witenagemotf or the Meeting of Wise Men, and 
what has since become the English Parliament, took 
over the settlement of these questions, and left the 



WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 39 

farmers free to attend to their own affairs. Even in 
matters of justice and punishment each group ap- 
pointed one of their number richer or more expert in 
such matters to choose juries and to preside over such 
cases. Finally the sovereign got into the habit of 
naming such persons, already marked out as fit for 
such duties by their neighbors, as magistrates, and 
in this, as we should call it, free and easy fashion, the 
business of government was carried on. You may 
go to the Bow Street Police Court and see the busi- 
ness of the day carried on in much the same fashion 
now. The magistrate is a wise gentleman dealing 
with the problems of his less fortunate neighbors. 
That is all. They were people with little aptitude 
for public affairs, and with a rooted distaste for over- 
much government, and so law-abiding, and naturally 
industrious and peaceable, that they needed and need 
less machinery of government than other peoples. 
They wanted independence on their own estates, and 
they wanted not to be meddled with. 

It is not my intention to provide origins for the 
English people in order to trace later, and thus easily 
from my own hypothesis, the development of their 
present characteristics. 

" They are the finest of all the German tribes, and 
strive more than the rest to found their greatness upon 
equity." *^ A passionless, firm and quiet people, they 
live a solitary life, and do not stir up wars or harass 
the country by plunder and theft." "And yet they 
are always ready to a man to take up arms and even 
to form an army if the case demands it." Thus 
writes Tacitus of them. 



40 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

This tribe of Saxons had, by accident or wise lead- 
ership, happened upon the very country best suited 
to them. A fertile island, cut off from the rest of the 
world, and with room for all, so that each one might 
with his family have a kingdom of his own. This 
with as little machinery of government as possible, 
and yet all ready to combine as equals in self-defence. 
But as they made their land productive, as they be- 
came rich, they became the prey of other peoples 
from northwestern Germany and what is now the 
Scandinavian peninsula, and were forced to defend 
their possessions and their customs against Angles, 
Danes, and Normans. 

It is a curious feature of the abiding, unrelenting 
purpose of these Saxons to govern themselves, and 
to be let alone, that though they were conquered in 
turn by Angles, Danes, and Normans, they swallowed 
up all three in the end, and imposed their customs, 
their language, their habit of mind, and their institu- 
tions upon each of the invaders in turn. They would 
have nothing to do with the half-developed feudalism 
of Angles and Danes, or with the fully developed 
feudalism of William the Conqueror and his fol- 
lowers. The Conqueror claimed that the land was 
his and that every holder of land owed fealty to him 
personally. It took just about an hundred years for 
the Saxon idea to prevail over this feudalistic notion, 
and the result was Magna Charta. The Magna 
Charta, wrested from King John by the Norman 
barons, was in reality the shaking off of personal al- 
legiance to a chieftain by the Norman barons, aided 
hy the Saxon gentry^ who had finally imbued them 



WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 41 

also with their own love of independence and a free 
government. They insisted then, and have main- 
tained ever since, that they derived their rights, their 
hberties, and their laws, not from a king, but from 
themselves. In the days of William the Conqueror 
their king was elective, though chosen from the reign- 
ing house. As late as 1689 the Commons voted that 
King James had abdicated and that the throne was 
vacant! They chose their own rulers, and no doubt 
would do so again to-day if necessary. It is much 
too long a story to go, step by step, through the re- 
cital of this development. It concerns us here only 
to note these unchanging characteristics of the race, 
maintained and strengthened through centuries of 
war, tumult, and conquest. 

The present House of Lords itself is the direct re- 
sult of the Saxon^s unwillingness to bother with gov- 
ernment and his willingness to leave such matters to 
those of the most leisure and most wealth, and there- 
fore, in all probability, to those of most capacity and 
most experience in such matters. It was, and is, the 
common-sense view of government, as over against 
the theoretical view. The danger in such a view of 
government, of course, lies in the fact that the gov- 
ernors, whether kings, or nobles, or statesmen, may 
grow to feel themselves paramount, and undertake 
to demand from the governed what they have no 
right to demand; such as taxation without representa- 
tion, or a full purse for the king by unjust require- 
ments, and without rendering an account. But 
these peaceable Saxons, on each and every occasion 
when their independence has been threatened, have 



42 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

risen in a mass, asserted their liberties, and then left 
their kings or gentry again to govern. The Magna 
Charta, and the revolt led by Simon de Montfort, and 
the head of Charles the First, are all warnings to 
whom it may concern that the Saxons are not to be 
meddled with, and are not to be anybody's subjects. 
Thus began the history, and the fact, of democratic 
government. Love of the land, industry, privacy, 
personal liberty; these were sought and found in this 
island by the Saxons, and they have been preserved 
there ever since. 

The London policeman with his hand uplifted, 
who has become part and parcel of the rhetorical 
stock in trade of American ambassadors, is the sym- 
bol of the Saxon's willingness to abide by the law, so 
long as the law is of his own making, and facilitates 
his getting about his business quickly and with a 
modicum of friction. That policeman is simply the 
embodiment of the spirit of the race which has fought 
off Jutes, Angles, Danes and Normans; which has 
broken nobles, and beheaded kings in order to be 
let alone to attend to their own affairs in their own 
way. They are not jealous of the law as are the 
French, because they make the law for their own con- 
venience, and because they know that it applies with 
equal force to all. They do not disregard the law 
as do we Americans who are overrun with amateur 
law-makers, because they realize that they can and 
do make the laws, and that to disregard rules of their 
own making makes either sport or government a 
nuisance. The coster-monger's cart and the coro- 
neted carriage in London streets have equal privi- 



WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 43 

leges, no more, no less, the one than the other. You 
may see both dealt with, with imperturbable im- 
partiality by the police any day in the streets. The 
poisonous philosophy of socialism, whether it be elee- 
mosynary socialism, or predatory socialism, which 
would make the State a distributor of the surplus of 
the strong for the propagation of the weak, makes its 
way but slowly among those of Saxon blood, '^f I 
were to be asked," says Montesquieu, "what is the 
predilection of the English, I should find it very hard 
to say: not war, nor birth, nor honors, nor success in 
love, nor the charms of ministerial favor. They want 
men to be men. They value only two things — 
wealth and worth.'' 

No State can make men men. No State can pro- 
duce wealth and worth. These three — men, and 
wealth, and worth — are produced, and produced 
only, where men measure themselves against men for 
the mastery over the fruits of the earth, without ad- 
ventitious aids of any kind, and under the protection 
of laws that all make and all obey. 

In these modern days, when so many strive to be- 
come members of Parliament, and when all sorts of 
pressure, financial and otherwise, is brought to bear 
to secure a peerage, it is interesting to remember that 
both the House of Lords and the House of Commons 
owe their existence to the fact that the Saxons did 
not wish to be bothered by attendance at their as- 
semblies. Somebody must go, and so one or two 
were chosen by each community to represent the 
rest; and the wise men of the Witenagemot of old, to- 
gether with the heads of the great church establish- 



44 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

merits, gradually came to be looked upon as the 
King's counsellors, and were called together to con- 
fer upon such questions as concerned the whole com- 
monwealth. 

It is by no means a good sign at the present time 
that, instead of wishing to attend to their own busi- 
ness, so many butchers and bakers and candle-stick 
makers are eager to enter Parliament, to attend to 
other people's business. It is not the good old Saxon 
way. 

In America, as in other democracies, our mistakes 
and our political troubles have mostly arisen from a 
wrong interpretation of ''government by the people." 
It has never meant, and can never be successful when 
it is interpreted as meaning, that each individual shall 
take an active part in government. This is the catch- 
penny doctrine, preached from the platform by the 
demagogue. The real spirit of ''government by the 
people" is merely that they should at all times have 
control, and keep control, of their governors, as these 
Saxons have done. 

No one would dream of harking back to the prim- 
itive days when every man sewed together his own 
skins for clothes and for foot-wear, made his own hut, 
caught his own fish, killed each for himself his meat, 
and picked each for himself his berries, and was his 
own priest, his own physician, and his own police- 
man. We now know that this was waste of time and 
energy. We find it more convenient, and more con- 
ducive to a long life, and a comfortable life, to divide 
ourselves up into bakers, and butchers, and tail- 
ors, and berry pickers, and priests, and policemen, 



WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 45 

and physicians. It is only in politics that we grope 
blindly amongst primitive methods for a solution of 
the problem of government. France, with her fan- 
tastic theories, and what proved her horrible fiasco, 
influenced our beginnings, and followed by that have 
come the Irish with their hatred of England and the 
English; and the mating of the French philosophy, 
with the Irish fact, has turned us aside from, and 
made us hesitating in, our allegiance to the only form 
of free government which has ever been successful 
in the world, and which is ours by ancestral right. 
It must be a poor race which cannot throw up from the 
mass of men a certain number whose wealth, leisure, 
and ability fit them for the work of governing; just 
as others amongst us are best fitted to bake or brew, 
or teach or preach, or make clothes or hats, or to 
dig in the fields. To say that every man is fitted 
to govern is to hark back to the days when every 
man was his own huntsman, fisherman, cook, and 
tailor. 

We have millions in America who are just learning 
the alphabet of free government, and they are still 
flattered by political parasites with loud voices and 
leather larynxes. Our parliaments and assemblies 
have too large a proportion, not of the brawn and 
brains that have made America a great nation in fifty 
years, but the semi-successful, the slippery and re- 
sourceful who live on the people, and by the people, 
SLTid for themselves. 

He is but a mean American who believes that this 
will last. The time approaches when Americans 
will slough off this hampering political clothing, put 



46 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

upon them by Latin and Celtic parasites, and insist 
upon being governed by the best among them, by 
the wisest among them, by the successful among 
them, and not by those whose living is derived by 
governing others, because they cannot govern them- 
selves. It is not because we are fools that the pres- 
ent condition continues, it is because we are weighed 
down with the responsibilities of nation making. We 
have succeeded commercially and in all material ways 
marvellously. In fifty years we have become the 
rival of the strongest, and the commercial portent to 
which every finger in Europe points. Let this same 
energy be turned upon setting our domestic political 
affairs in order and the change in government will be 
as complete, and come as quickly, as in other matters. 
We have allowed our idlers to govern, with a splen- 
did honor-roll of exceptions; we shall ere long insist 
that our ablest shall take their places in the good old 
Saxon way. 

Strangely enough, however, the House of Lords 
still remains the most democratic institution in Eng- 
land. It may still claim for itself to be the Witenage- 
mot, or gathering of wise men, and one wonders why 
it does not defend itself along those lines. 

It is not a house of birth or ancestry, for it is com- 
posed to-day to an overwhelming extent of successful 
men from almost every walk in life. No one cares a 
fig what a man's ancestry was in this matter-of-fact 
land if he succeeds, if he becomes rich and powerful. 

William the Conqueror himself was a bastard, and 
his mother was the daughter of an humble tanner of 
Falaise. 



WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 47 

The mother of the great Queen Elizabeth was the 
daughter of a plain English gentleman. 

A pot-girl of Westminster married the master of 
the pot-house. After his death she consulted a law- 
yer named Hyde. Mr. Hyde married her. Mr. 
Hyde afterward became Lord Chancellor, with the 
title of Lord Clarendon, and his wife, the former pot- 
girl, bore him a daughter. This daughter married 
the Duke of York, and became the mother of Mary 
and Anne Stewart, both afterward queens of Eng- 
land. 

It is evident that if queens of England may have 
a barmaid for grandmother, lesser mortals need not 
fret on the subject of ancestry. 

The Englishman would not be what he is, nor 
would he in the least be transmitting his very valua- 
ble Saxon heritage, if he gave up his democratic cus- 
tom of an aristocracy of power for the feeble con- 
tinental custom of an aristocracy of birth. What the 
one and the other is to-day answers the question as to 
the relative merits of the two systems without need 
of discussion. The English, though nowadays many 
of them do not know it themselves, are the most 
democratic of all nations. 

William the Conqueror divided England among 
the commanders of his army, and conferred about 
twenty earldoms; not one of these exists to-day. Nor 
do any of the honors conferred by William Rufus, 
1087-1100; Henry the First, 1100-1135; Stephen, 
1135-1154; Henry the Second, 1154-1189; Richard 
the First, 1189-1199; or John, 1 199-12 16 

All the dukedoms created from the institution of 



48 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

Edward the Third, 13 27-1377, down to the com- 
mencement of the reign of Charles the Second, 1649, 
except Norfolk, and Somerset, and Cornwall — the 
title held by the Prince of Wales — have perished. 

Winchester and Worcester, the latter merged in 
the dukedom of Beaufort, are the only marquisates 
older than George the Third, 1 760-1820. 

Of all earldoms conferred by the Normans, Plan- 
tagenets and Tudors, only eleven remain, and six of 
these are merged in higher honors. 

The House of Lords to-day does not number among 
its members a single male descendant of any of the 
barons who were chosen to enforce Magna Charta. 
The House of Lords does not contain a single male 
descendant of the peers who fought at Agincourt. 
There is only a single family in all the realm, Wrot- 
tesleys, which can boast of a male descent from the 
date of the institution of the Garter, 1349. 

In a word, the present House of Lords is con- 
spicuously and predominantly a democratic body, 
chosen from the successful of the land. 

Seventy of the peers were ennobled on account of 
distinction in the practice of the law alone. 

The Dukes of Leeds trace back to a cloth-worker; 
the Earls of Radnor to a Turkey merchant ; the Earls 
of Craven to a tailor; the families of Dartmouth, 
Ducie, Pomfret, Tankerville, Dormer, Romney, Dud- 
ley, Fitzwilliam, Cowper, Leigh, Damley, Hill, Nor- 
manby, all sprang from London shops and counting- 
houses, and that not so very long ago. 

Ashburton, Carrington, Belper, Overstone, Mount 
Stephen, Hindlip, Burton, Battersea, Glenesk, Al- 



WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 



49 



denham, Lister, Avebury, Burnham, Biddulph, 
Northcliffe, Nimburnholme, Winterstoke, Roths- 
child, Brassey, Revelstoke, Strathcona and Mount 
Royal, Michelham, and others, too many to men- 
tion, have taken their places among the peers by 
force of long purses gained in trade. 

Lord Belper, for example, created in 1856, is the 
grandson of Jedediah Strutt, who was the son of a 
small farmer, and made wonderful ribbed stockings. 

"Wealth however got, in England makes 
Lords of mechanics, gentlemen of rakes. 
Antiquity and birth are needless here: 
'Tis impudence and money makes the peer. 



Great families of yesterday we show; 

And lords whose parents were the Lord knows who." 

The Saxon system still prevails. Those who push 
themselves to the front, those who accumulate a 
residue of power in the shape of leisure, are called 
upon to govern so that the others need not be both- 
ered by such matters. It has been harder in some 
ages than in others for the man, unassisted by birth, 
to rise. But there has been no time in England when 
it has been wholly impossible. As a consequence of 
this, there is probably no body of men in the world 
who combine such a variety of experience and knowl- 
edge amongst them as the House of Lords. There 
are one or more representatives of every branch of 
human industry and professional skill. 

Strange as it may seem, there is no assembly where 
a man could go — granted that all the peers were 



50 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

present — where he would be more certain of getting 
sound advice upon every subject, from higher mathe- 
matics and abstruse law down to the shoeing of a 
horse or the splicing of a cable. 

Why the English themselves, or, at any rate, cer- 
tain of their number, wish to abolish this assembly 
of the picked brains and ability in every walk in life, 
from literature and chemistry to beer-brewing and 
railroad building, I, as an American, cannot under- 
stand. It is the culmination of the essential philos- 
ophy of Saxondom. This is what the race has been 
at for two thousand years, not to be too much gov- 
erned by, but to permit to govern, those who have 
proved themselves most capable of doing so. 

The average number of barons summoned to 
Parliament by Edward the Second was 74; the aver- 
age of the reign of Edward the Third was 43. At the 
beginning of the reign of Henry IV the lay members 
of the House of Lords consisted of 4 dukes, i mar- 
quis, 10 earls, and 34 barons. Henry VIII only as- 
sembled 51 peers in his Parliament; while only 82 
sat in the first Parliament of James the First; and 117 
in the first Parliament of Charles the First. At the 
end of the reign of Charles the Second there were but 
176 names on the roll of the Lords. The roll was 
increased to 192 peerages before the death of Will- 
iam the Third; to 209 before the death of Anne; 
to 216 before the death of George the First; to 229 be- 
fore the death of George the Second; to 339 at the 
death of George the Third; to 396 before the death of 
George the Fourth; to 456 at the death of William 
the Fourth; to 512 in 1881; to 541 in 1892; and the 



WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 51 

total number at the present time (1908), including 
Spiritual and Law Lords, is 853, 200 of whom have 
been created since 1882, and nearly half of them since 
1830. 

Ah, but some one answers, suppose these men gov- 
ern badly, or suppose they c^ase to represent the 
nation, or suppose the sons of these men are not of 
the calibre of their fathers. The last supposition is 
easily answered. We have seen already what a mush- 
room assembly it is from the point of view of ancient 
lineage. They are by no means all gentlemen, in the 
technical sense of that word; and by no means with- 
out exception worthy. But that only adds the neces- 
sary human factor of fallibility. 

The adult males in a town-meeting in Hingham, 
Massachusetts, for example, could trace back to 
male ancestors, who attended that same town-meet- 
ing an hundred years before, in greater numbers, in 
proportion to their total number, than could the 
■members of the House of Lords, to ancestors who had 
sat in that same chamber. Nor is it easy to see 
wherein they fail to represent the nation, since they 
come from every and all classes; nor why they should 
govern badly, since they are chosen only after prov- 
ing themselves to be of superior ability and sound 
judgment. It is true that a son may not turn out to 
have the same ability as his father, but if the son of 
a Rothschild has abihty enough to keep the money 
his father made, he must, in these days of liquid se- 
curities, be a man of no small abihty. Those who 
are weaklings do not last long in the hurly-burly of 
the modem world. We have seen how very few 



52 



ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 



peers are the male descendants of houses dating back 
any distance. God and nature turn out the incom- 
petents almost as quickly as would the electorate. 
The chances of any living man having a male de- 
scendant able to keep what was left him, and also 
able to get more, and beget more, an hundred years 
after his time, is very small indeed. 

Indeed, this system evolved from sound Saxon 
sense has done more than anything else to produce 
that wholeness in the English social body which is a 
salient feature of English life. There are, or at any 
rate have been until very lately, fewer disquieting 
social and political segregations due to class distinc- 
tions in England than in any other nation in the 
world. 

Grandsons, and younger sons, of peers drift back 
into the upper middle class and remain there unless 
they rise by their own exertions; while there is a con- 
tinual absorption of the strong, the competent, and 
the successful into the peerage. This mixes up and 
leavens all classes. Noble sons become commoners, 
noble commoners become peers. 

This is what explains the existence of the House 
of Lords in so democratic a country as England. It 
exists because it is the most democratic institution in 
England, and because in the long run it has been rec- 
ognized as an assembly whose opinion is as nearly as 
possible the opinion of a consensus of the compe- 
tent. 

But here again we must bear in mind that we are 
neither defending nor attacking. This upper cham- 
ber so nearly represents what these early Saxons were, 



WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? S3 

perhaps not in its details aware of, striving to pro- 
duce, viz.: government with as Httle government as 
possible, and that, by those w^ith the leisure and ca- 
pacity to do it, that it deserves attentive study. 

These people who have governed more of the world, 
and a far larger population, than any other people 
since time began, deserve respectful consideration 
for their methods in, and their philosophy of, govern- 
ment. Any socialistic sneering, or republican rib- 
aldry, on the subject of the British system of govern- 
ment, must necessarily react upon the foolish one 
who indulges in them. The ready answer is: We are 
taking charge of one in every five square miles, and 
one in every five inhabitants of the globe; if you can 
do it better, why do you not do it? 

It is a notable feature of the history of this great 
governing people that they have had little desire 
to take part in the governing themselves. The gath- 
ering of the wise men, the assembly, in short, at which 
the nation sat in council, was open to all, but by a 
natural process was reduced to the attendance of 
those who could afford the time and the money to 
go.' By an easy step those who had the time and the 
money gradually became the great ones of the land. 

WiUiam the Conqueror only imitated the example 
of his predecessors in calling together the wise and 
the great of the nation to consider the customs, and 
ther.ce to determine the laws, of the kingdom. 

It was Simon de Montfort who led the freemen 
against the barons grown too proud, conquered them, 
and summoned a parliament by directing the sheriffs 
to return two knights for each county, and two bur- 



54 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

gesses for each borough in the kingdom; and there 
you have the beginning of Parliament. They were 
not clamoring to govern, but they found themselves 
forced to take a hand lest the barons should grow to 
think governing their right. 

The statute of a generation later than this time, 
which still remains on the statute book, begins by de- 
claring that no tax or aid shall be taken without the 
good-will and assent of archbishops, bishops, earls, 
barons, knights, burgesses, and other freemen of the 
land. 

The profound and real difference between the 
philosophy of democracy and the philosophy of aris- 
tocracy is thr t the former emphasizes the identity of 
men, and the latter the diversity of men. The one 
makes democracies, the other makes monarchies. 
But men are all alike, and they are all unlike, and 
either proposition, carried to its extreme, defeats 
itself; in the former liberty becomes license, and in 
the latter order becomes despotism. The pendulum 
swings back and forth between the two extremes, and 
down to this day the English have succeeded in recon- 
ciling the claims of both philosophies, and of keeping 
the peace between them. Their gift of the solution 
of the problem of government to mankind rivals the 
great gift of Art by the Greeks, and of Law by the 
Romans. 

But even to this day these common-sense people 
care nothing for the fiction, for the trappings, of gov- 
ernment. Even now acts of ParliamxCnt begin: *'Be 
it enacted by the King's most excellent Majesty, by 
and with advice and consent of the Lords spiritual 
and temporal, and Commons in this present Parlia- 



WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 55 

ment assembled." The King knows, and the Lords 
spiritual and temporal know, and the Commons 
know, that the King does not make the laws, or en- 
force the laws, but they are all equally willing to have 
him appear to do so. They have no taste for osten- 
tatious participation in governing even now. They 
would still rather mind their own business, though 
there are, alas, signs nowadays that they are losing 
somewhat their Saxon heritage in this respect. 

In the past they have taken a hand in governing 
only when their governors overstepped the bounds, 
and attempted to govern with the physical and finan- 
cial aid, but without the consent of the governed. 
Then, over and over again, against barons or king, 
or whomsoever it might be, thay have risen and de- 
manded to be governed as little as need be, but ac- 
cording to their ancient custom of personal liberty 
for each one. 

One hears occasionally in the inebriation of exuber- 
ance which vents itself in song, that: Britons never 
shall be slaves. It is well known, of course, that 
Britons have been slaves, and worn the collar of a 
Roman master, but the Saxons, their successors, 
never have been slaves. This is interesting because 
practically down to 1867, or forty years ago, the 
English government has been in a very few hands 
indeed. 

The temptation must have been constant ever since 
the Romans left and the Saxons came, for the small 
governing class to usurp all power. And yet with 
practically no voice in the government, this has never 
been accomplished, for it has always been prevented 
by the people themselves. 



56 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

It should be remembered that long after the devel- 
opment of government into a House of Lords and 
a House of Commons, these two bodies were con- 
trolled by a very few men. It is said that as late as 
1793, out of 513 members of Parliament, 309 of them 
owed their election to the nomination either of the 
Treasury, or of some 162 individuals who controlled 
the voters. 

The House of Commons of 1801, including the 
Irish and Scotch members, consisted of 658 members, 
and of these 425 were returned either on the nomina- 
tion, or on the recommendation of 252 patrons. 

Thus has England been governed persistently by 
the few. Nor has this been against the wishes of the 
many. We have seen how, time after time, the many 
have demanded, and conquered for themselves, what 
they considered to be for their welfare and their hap- 
piness; but constant personal participation in govern- 
ment has not been deemed a necessity of personal 
freedom, but rather, indeed, a drag upon it. I am 
inclined to look upon this as the most important 
factor in their wonderful growth as a nation. 

In 1832 the borough franchise was confined to 
householders whose houses were worth not less than 
ten pounds a year, and the county franchise was en- 
larged by the admission of copyholders, leaseholders, 
and of tenants whose holding was of the clear annual 
value of fifty pounds. Then and there, and for the 
first time in the history of the nation, England was 
practically governed by the middle class. 

In 1867 this was followed by a still more sweeping 
reform, and, by the act of that year, every freeholder 



WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 57 

whose freehold was of the value of forty shillings a 
year; every copyholder and leaseholder, of the annual 
value of five pounds; and every householder whose 
rent was not less than twelve pounds a year, was en- 
titled to vote for the county. Every householder in 
a borough and every lodger who paid ten pounds a 
year for his lodging and had been resident for more 
than twelve months, was entitled to vote for the bor- 
ough member. This is to all intents and purposes 
male adult suffrage. 

Nevertheless, up to the election of members to this 
present Parliament, when an unusual number of 
labor members were elected, Parliament has been 
composed of an overwhelming majority chosen from 
the leisure classes. 

Pitt once said that an Englishman with an income 
of ten thousand pounds a year had a right to be a 
peer. The Enghsh voter still, to a large extent, takes 
the same view. He seems to hold that those have 
the best claim to go to Parliament who have the 
leisure and wealth to enable them to go conveniently. 
Even now when a dangerously large number of peo- 
ple — some say thirty millions — are always on the 
verge of starvation, the voter is but little touched by 
that despair of the individual in his own manhood, 
reduced to a system, known as socialism. He still be- 
lieves in his gentry as most to be trusted, and best 
qualified to govern. He has a rooted distrust of those 
who wish to be paid to govern. He has not ceased 
to look upon the business of governing as a duty, not 
a trade. 

Some instinct tells him, for no one would accuse 



58 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

the British voter of being either a philosopher, or of 
being unusually intelligent even, that the solution of 
the problem of his lack of wealth does not lie in the 
fact that his gentry have too much. To take an- 
other man's coat does not take with it the ability 
to keep that coat against all comers, any more than 
to exchange gloves with the man who has just knocked 
you out in a sparring bout would enable you in turn 
to knock him out. That easy solution of inequality, 
that because somebody else has more, therefore it is 
that I have less, has not fooled the Englishman as 
yet. He has only to look across the Channel to see 
the results of that philosophy. When he looks he 
sees a nation that has so belittled its men that they 
can only prevent themselves from being swallowed 
up by their enemies by lending their hard-earned 
gold to Russia, an autocracy with which, of course, 
an honest republic could have nothing in common, 
and by accepting the friendship of England, a mon- 
archy, because England wishes a buffer-state be- 
tween herself and Germany. 

In an hundred years England has grown great, 
while, since the Revolution, France has diminished 
to the stature of an epicene amongst nations, traffick- 
ing in her ideals and in her honor, and advertising 
the virtue of her capital for sale to all comers as her 
principal stock in trade. She is like a pretty woman 
who will sell anything for security and comfort. This 
lesson has not been lost upon the Englishman, dull 
as he is. 

Fox, Liverpool, and Lord John Russell, all en- 
tered Parliament before they were of age, though this 



WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 59 

was technically a breach of the law, which required 
that a member should be of age, a male, and of some 
wealth. So closely indeed have these people clung 
to their tradition about the land, that many, no 
doubt, will be surprised to learn that it was only at 
the beginning of the reign of the late Queen Victoria 
that one could become a member of Parliament with- 
out being the possessor of a certain amount of landed 
property. He must be a landlord, in short. 

He might have thousands invested in securities of 
all kinds, that mattered not; he must be a landholder. 
They came to England to be free landholders, and 
when Queen Victoria came to the throne that was still 
their ideal of what a man fit to assist in governing 
should be. 

As late as the middle of the eighteenth century 
England • was almost entirely rural. The greater 
number of the towns were merely country towns. 
Perhaps the secret of the independence and the homo- 
geneity of the population is to be found in this multi- 
tude of men who firmly believed in the land, were per- 
manently settled upon the land, and whose claim 
to personal dignity and political and social dictinc- 
tion rested upon the possession of the land. 

We have heard in our own day, in America, often 
repeated, the cry: Back to the land! Nowhere will 
one find stronger arguments to support such advice 
than in the history of the Saxons in England. One 
might choose as the three requisites of a people that 
should prosper and conquer, that they should believe 
in God, live on the land, and let their leaders 
govern. 



5o ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

It is only in comparatively recent times that England 
has ceased to be a nation of farmers. In the middle 
of the fourteenth century the population of England 
and Wales was probably about 2,300,000; at the end 
of the seventeenth century something over 5,000,000; 
and in 183 1, 14,000,000. 

The expansion of England into an empire grows 
as naturally and as surely out of this love of theirs 
for the land and liberty as the first settlements oi 
England by the Saxons grew out of this same desire. 

Their Saxon plain was crowded. The Jutes, led 
by descendants of the warlike and roving Odin, 
needed companions in arms, and these Saxons fol- 
lowed them on one of their excursions to England. 

Finding that the Saxons settled peacefully and in- 
dustriously on the land, and acted as a buffer-state 
between their own settlement and the roving Brit- 
ons, they induced still more Saxons to come over, 
and more came, and then more and more, until they 
became the predominant factor in the settlement of 
the country. 

They were not, as is generally supposed, and as is 
often erroneously stated, of the fighting, marauding, 
restless breed of the piratical races, which from time 
to time ravaged the coasts of both what is now Eng- 
land and what is now France. 

In spite of their many wars, the English, as were 
their peasant ancestors the Saxons, are not a warhke 
people. Si res poscat, writes Tacitus. If it is worth 
while they fight. But they fought not as did the 
fiercer tribes, merely for the love of fighting. Read 
their history and you find — and it greatly alters cer- 



WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 6i 

tain preconceived opinions — that they were not, 
and are not, a war-loving, or a quarrelsome race. 

It is often said that England is always fighting 
somewhere. When one considers the enormous area 
of land, and the varied populations she controls, it is 
not surprising that she should have constant trouble 
on her hands. On the other hand, if one investi- 
gates these wars, big and little, they all fall under one 
general head : the protection of her subjects in the pos- 
session of the land. 

The two wars with China were to protect her land- 
owners in India who trafficked in opium with the 
Chinese. The war in the Crimea was against Rus- 
sia, looming up as her rival in India. The support 
of the Allies against Napoleon was a necessary com- 
mercial expedient to save her shipping and her com- 
merce. The war with America was again, at first, a 
question of commercial significance alone. The war 
in Africa was plainly enough for the upholding of the 
status of her citizens against the Dutch. There is a 
superb selfishness involved in each and every one of 
these conflicts. No one can defend for a moment the 
terrible hypocrisy of the race, in their insistence upon 
the right of their traders to debauch the Chinese by 
the sale of opium against the wishes of the Chinese 
authorities. Imagine the horror of the Englishman 
should a neighbor nation insist upon the right to sell 
cocaine in England whether he liked it or not, and 
give as a reason that a certain colony derived a large 
revenue from the sale of cocaine, which would be 
cut off if England refused to allow its sale in her ter- 
ritories. This is exactly what happened in China. 



62 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

The British colony of Hong Kong is a monument to 
England's infamous selfishness where her trade is con- 
cerned. Hong Kong was taken from the Chinese as 
an indemnity for daring to make war upon England's 
opium trade. 

The war with America was due to selfishness^ 
coupled with forgetfulness. The Englishman went 
to America, almost exactly as the Saxon went to Eng- 
land. He went for land and liberty. The settlers 
were agriculturists, who founded free estates and 
drove off the waring, nomadic tribes, just as the Sax- 
ons drove off the Britons. These American settlers 
were of the same class as those they left behind them. 
Let us get it out of our heads and keep it out, that 
England is an aristocracy. It is not and never has 
been. It has not and never has had a noblesse. At 
once, indeed, almost before they set foot on land, the 
wiser and wealthier among them are set up in au- 
thority over them, not to rule them, but to govern for 
them. Here we have the same institutions again, and 
the same dogged insistence upon liberty to till the 
soil in peace. But when England, forgetting her own 
history, and her own blood, set out to rule and to tax 
without representation these people, she was pre- 
cipitating exactly the same kinds of conflict as had 
taken place between John and the barons; between 
Simon de Montfort and the barons; and between 
Charles and the Parliament. The result was fore- 
doomed. The Saxons can only live in one way, and 
that is by ruling themselves. As the greatest repre- 
sentative of the Saxon race of the last two hundred 
years put it; A government of the people, for the peo- 



WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 63 

pie, by the people. Their confidence in this form of 
government has resulted in forcing its adoption upon 
all peoples, and all countries, that they control. That 
any family, clan, tribe, or nation should wish to live 
under other than this Saxon arrangement, is to them 
unthinkable. 

Lord Curzon, late viceroy of India, in a volume 
entitled, "Problems of the Far East," writes as fol- 
lows in his dedication: "To those who beheve that 
the British Empire is, under Providence, the greatest 
instrument for good that the world has ever seen and 
who hold with the writer, that its work in the Far 
East is not yet accompHshed, this book is dedicated." 
Where, in the history of mankind, may one look to 
find such a magnificent assumption of virtue and om- 
niscience, coupled with incomprehensible self-satis- 
faction ? It makes one fearful for the destinies of the 
race when one sees it proclaim itself thus arrogant. 
Here is a haughty egotism that would make Alex- 
ander, Caesar, or Napoleon turn pale. Who believes 
that the world is better where England dominates? 
The English. Who believes that India is happier? 
The English. Who beheves that Ireland is happier ? 
The English. Who believes that the East under 
English protection is happier? The Enghsh. Who 
believes that North America is happier ? The Eng- 
lish. But what do the four hundred millions of peo- 
ple, controlled by these milHon English gentlemen, 
whose omniscient prophet Lord Curzon is, — what 
do they think? What do they say? Personally I 
am not questioning or criticising. I am merely a 
child making notes. This amazing assumption that 



64 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

England has done more for the world than any other 
agency, is a characteristic of these people that cannot 
be too often insisted upon. As I have said before, 
it is not a pose with them. It is not impudence, it is 
their rooted belief in their own superiority. Any- 
body who starts out to have dealings with them, either 
personally or along international lines, must take 
that into consideration. They know only one way. 
That is their way, and their way is the best way and 
is sanctioned by God, who, by the way, is the God 
of the English national church. 

It is magnificent, is it not ? but it makes one stop 
just for a moment to get one's breath. 

Let some one tell us what fantastic arrangement 
of molecules turned the youthful rake into a St. Au- 
gustine, the unknown country lad into a Shakespeare, 
the Corsican peasant into a Napoleon, or the West- 
ern rail-splitter and country lawyer into a Lincoln, 
and when these are all explained, there will remain 
an even greater mystery: how these Saxon peasants 
became the English empire of to-day. 

It is said often enough that a man who restricts his 
energies to the pursuit of one end, who thinks of 
nothing else, saves himself for that alone, keeps his 
eyes fixed on that alone, is likely to succeed even 
tlK)Ugh he be of mediocre powers. The fable of the 
hare and the tortoise was written as a brief commen- 
tary on this fact, that it's doggedness that does it! 
These Saxons, since the historian's first introduc- 
tion to them, inhabiting that Saxon plain, have had 
apparently but one aim: possession of the land in 
peace. Little by litHe they have become the inher- 



WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 65 

itors of one-fifth of all the land there is. We have 
traced here, by a mere thread of narrative, their his- 
tory, and we have noted their present status among 
the nations of the world. We have seen nothing bril- 
liant or heroic, nothing Napoleonic in this story; but 
merely steady growth along ever the same lines, aided 
by a genius for compromise. They stop and wait 
when they must, they fight when they must, they 
even pay to be let alone when they must, they spill 
over into other countries when they must, but land 
and liberty they keep ever before them as their goal. 
Who are the English, what are the English ? They 
are Saxons, who love the land, who love their liberty, 
and whose sole claim to genius is their common- 
sense. 



Ill 

THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 

THERE are people, both English and foreign^ 
who instead of compromise, write Hypocrisy; 
others still who write Conciliation; while the 
more vehement write Pharisaism. 

What has been written in other chapters of the 
origins, development, and the manners and customs 
of the English, calls now for something in the way 
of an explanation. The statements therein contained 
must seem to the careful reader like a mere tum- 
bling together of haphazard and often violently con- 
tradictory facts. There must be some string of phi- 
losophy of life upon which to place such an odd lot 
of jewels, some precious, some false, and many that 
are ill-assorted, and which apparently do not in the 
least belong side by side. Here we have a king who 
is not a king in any autocratic sense; a free people 
who are not a free people; a constitution which is 
not a constitution; an aristocratic House of Lords 
composed of successful merchants, manufacturers, 
journalists, lawyers and money-lenders, leavened by 
a miner: :y of men of ancient lineage; a State Church 
which is not a State Church; a nation professing 
Christianity, but nevertheless continually at war, sod- 
den with drink, and offering all its prizes of wealth 

66 



THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 69 

Vaughan, who is, I believe, castigator-in-chief to 
the sins of London society, preach upon the sub- 
ject of the Devil. He told us that science and 
philosophy had nothing to do with this question, 
and that there was of course a personal Devil now 
just as much as there was a personal Devil at the 
time when our first ancestors, Adam and Eve, com- 
mitted that fatal pomological mistake in the Gar- 
den of Eden. This I believe is true! It may be 
a somewhat Jesuitical way of putting it, but taken 
one way or the other it may be believed by all, 
believers and doubters alike. 

In the evening I was present at the cathedral 
-church, St. Paul's, where I heard a distinguished 
cleric of the State Church, in a foggy, but far- 
reaching, voice, calling upon "this Christian Em- 
pire of Great Britain" to interfere to prevent the 
horrible atrocities now practised upon the natives 
of the Congo Free State. He pictured the canni- 
bals of that region as having been " free " and 
" happy," — what glaring and ridiculous hypoc- 
risy! — until King Leopold, through his agents, had 
enslaved them into the search for the rubber, which 
alone of commercial articles, is as elastic as that 
monarch's morals. As I sat and listened in these 
very different places of worship, and in no scof- 
fing mood, — for he is a braver man than I who is 
not drawn to think of his latter end during a Sun- 
day spent in London, — I was impressed by the 
aloofness of each and all of these services, from 
any connection with the sad problems that con- 
front England on every hand. 



70 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

Here was a handful of Englishmen and Eng- 
lishwomen in a costly tabernacle, attempting to 
mesmerize the world with the cabalistic messages 
of a rich and uncultivated old woman hailing from 
Massachusetts. There was a church full hstening 
attentively to a medieval portrayal of the Devil as 
a terrorizer of sinners; and, last of all, a high officer 
of the State Church, lashing a foreign potentate, 
who is best known on the Continent by the name 
of a popular harlot. Mrs. Eddy, The Devil, and 
King Leopold! Strange texts, for a people at close 
grips with poverty, high taxes, drunkenness, gam- 
bling, and lack of schooling at home; people ped- 
dling opium to the Chinese, pandering to priestcraft 
in Ireland, with twenty-five thousand Chinamen sla- 
ving in their gold-mines in South Africa, and with 
hundreds of thousands dying of starvation m India 
on their hands abroad. 

Some people call this hypocrisy, some pharisa- 
ism But there is no need of harsh names. He 
can have had but little practise with the pen who 
does not find it easy enough to call names, to fimg 
epithets; but he who does it is quite unworthy to 
be trusted with so dangerous a weapon, and so 
useful a surgeon's knife. I write these things to 
explain, not to revile. This is a great country - 
we have said it scores of times already m these 
pages, and therefore it is worth while getting at the 
meaning of these things. They are not pharisees, 
they are compromisers. They have drilled them- 
selves through centuries, till this m.ental haziness, 
which permits them to hold two contradictory prop- 



THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 71 

ositions at one and the same time, has become a 
part of their being. 

Their King, though King by right of birth, has 
been set aside, has been beheaded, and is now in 
the hands of a cabinet, chosen, not as it used to 
'be, by him, but by his people. George the First, 
who could not speak English or imderstand it, 
when he came to the throne, and who was wont 
to communicate with his ministers in bad Latin, 
gave up attending the meetings of the cabinet 
because he could not understand its discussions; 
thus was the last link snapped in the chain which 
held the cabinet in the grasp of the King. As 
late as the time of Queen Victoria, she besought 
her friends in the Parliament not to impose Glad- 
stone upon her as Prime Minister again, a man 
whom she disliked, but they were helpless. Glad- 
stone was the man appointed by the suffrage of the 
people, and Queen Victoria must accept him. So 
little is the King, King. On the other hand, in 
the case of this present King, the King is the people 
plus the experience, the knowledge, the impartial 
situation, and unprejudiced mind, which the people 
ought to have before making a decision, or passing 
judgment. That is the ideal constitutional ruler, 
and the present King comes very close to the ideal. 
At any rate. King Edward the Seventh is, through 
his popularity with all classes, more powerful than 
any man, any class, any sect, any minister, or either 
of the houses of Parliament. His wisdom is not 
the wisdom of the people, with the knowledge they 
have; but the wisdom of the people, with the knowl- 



72 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

edge and experience he has. It is the knowledge 
of many, filtered through an unique experience, and 
this comes close to being the acme of common- 
sense. He is the most astute diplomatist, and the 
most useful and charming gentleman in Europe. 
So much is the King, King! 

The people are a free people, in the sense that 
nowhere else in the world is the individual so little 
ruled, hampered or oppressed; but poHtically they 
are bound fast by the chains of a House of Lords, 
which, entirely independent of them, rejects their 
measures when it so pleases. And here again is 
still another anomaly, for I believe that the House 
of Lords is, as a rule, a surer interpreter of the 
sober wishes of the English people as a whole, than 
the House of Commons. 

The constitution is so loosely mortared together 
that you can take a brick out, or put a brick in, 
without greatly disturbing the house of the State, 
which has been put together slowly, from old cus- 
toms grown to be laws. 

The State Church may have its chief priests 
appointed by a Prime Minister like Walpole, who 
was a loose Hver and a hard drinker; or by a Cham- 
berlain, who is a Unitarian; or by a Morley, who is 
an agnostic; or even by a Jew like Disraeli, which- 
ever one may, or might happen to be, Prime Min- 
ister. The high priest of this church, the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, is paid a salary of $7SP^ 
a year, and the Bishop of London a salary of $50. 
000 a year, while the bulk of the clergy live on pit- 
tances, and thirty millions of its flock are, it is said, 



THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 73 

continually on the verge of starvation. What could 
be more grotesque ? On the other hand, the Bishop 
of London, unless I am woefully mistaken in my 
man, is one whose fine spiritual sincerity shines in 
his face, and whatever his intellectual calibre, his 
influence must be worth many times ten thousand 
pounds a year to London. Though I know noth- 
ing of him personally, I feel very sure that very few 
hundreds of those thousands of salary go for his 
personal comfort. Here again the theory of such 
payments to any priest is wrong, exasperatingly 
wrong, but in this particular case, it no doubt 
works well, not to say nobly. 

The King, the people, the constitution, the church, 
we have glanced at their contradictions. Each and 
all unexplained are indefensible, but by com- 
promise they are made to work. It is this con- 
stant search for the feasible, for the convenient, for 
the conciliatory, for the instantly practicable, and 
the total ignoring of the logical, and sometimes even 
of the true and the right, which has given the name 
Per fide Albion to England and made her so vul- 
nerable to the accusation of hypocrisy. We all 
know how in this complicated society of ours, in 
order to be free to do even a little, one must es- 
cape from the tyranny of trying to do too much. 
All pictures may not be painted on one canvas, all 
the books may not be written in one chapter, all 
the legislation may not be accomplished in one 
session. 

This philosophy of subordinating high principles 
to practical exigencies has reached its climax in the 



74 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

House of Commons. In the first place, the cham- 
ber where the commons meets has not seats enough 
for its members. If all attended at any one session, 
many would be forced to stand. Every conceivable 
question comes up for discussion in this assembly, 
which deals with the whole Empire. This, by-the- 
way, makes it the most cosmopolitan, the most in- 
fluential, and the most interesting legislative assem- 
bly in the world. A member asks that a clock on 
a certain pubhc building in London be regulated; 
another member calls attention to the condition of 
the Zoological Garden; still another to the proposed 
improvements of the Marble Arch; another mem- 
ber asks about the housing of the Chinese laborers 
in Africa; another asks whether the furniture in 
Irish school-houses is to be paid for by the State 
or by the local rate-payers; another asks a question 
about the theft of the Crown jewels at Dublin; 
another asks about the plan for a governor of Mac- 
edonia; another brings up the question of the play- 
ing of hand-organs in the public streets of London; 
another asks if a sample gun of those to be provided 
for the new territorial army may be brought up to 
the House, for the inspection of the members; a 
Welshman rises to complain that the new army 
scheme does not consider sufficiently the feelings 
of the Welsh; an officer of the Yeomanry asks who 
is to pay for his horse if the horse dies while on 
duty; Irishmen are continually to the fore with 
questions concerning the Emerald Isle. 

One wonders, as one sits and listens to this hodge- 
podge of questions and answers about everything 



THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 75 

under this British sun that never sets, how anything 
is ever done. The present ParHament (1908) con- 
tains six hundred and seventy members. More 
than one-eighth of the total are irreconcilable Irish- 
men, who are there to bribe, bully or balk the House, 
if thereby Ireland may have a parliament of its own. 
Fifty-four are labor members. Think for a mo- 
ment of the problem of dealing with the affairs of 
the greatest Empire we know in such an assem- 
bly, with its multitude of interests and its variety 
of personalities. No wonder there is conciliation, 
even to the point of fiabbiness, otherwise nothing 
could be done. The Minister of War, with a ro- 
tund person and the face of a cherub, answers at- 
tacks, not in the voice of Mars, but in the falsetto 
and piping tones of peace. So with the other min- 
isters. All are tainted with this love of compro- 
mise. Even the upright John Morley, indepen- 
dent politically, easily first among writers of lucid 
English prose, bends to defend India's exchequer 
in the sale of opium to protesting China. 

His Majesty's government licenses opium dens 
in Hong Kong, the Straits Settlements, and Ceylon, 
and in certain other Crown Colonies, deriving a 
considerable income therefrom. In the year 1907 
there were in Singapore alone 97 licensed shops 
for the retail of chandu, which is opium prepared 
for smoking; and 449 rooms licensed for smoking 
it. It may be said that this is not a direct revenue 
to the government of His Majesty, but as the Straits 
Settlements at any rate have for many years con- 
tributed one-fifth of their annual revenues to Im- 
perial defence purposes, it is a mere evasion not to 



76 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

recognize it as such. This form of compromise 
is merely a mush of concession. It is not the phi- 
losophy of getting things done by giving way a Httle 
here and a little there which is the pith of English 
administrative success all over the world, rather it 
is cold-blooded drowning of honor in selfishness. 
If there is advantage for England, other things, be 
they even truth and right, must retire into the back- 
ground. 

"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates and men decay." 

As Mr. Bryce wrote in the "American Common- 
wealth," in spite of much poHtical machinery which 
works badly, and many social characteristics which 
seem to point to disaster, there is a certain some- 
thing of buoyancy, of vigor, of hope, in the Amer- 
icans that convinced him of their future triumph 
over all difficulties. Something of the same thing 
is true of Mr. Bryce's own country. The people 
of one locality can never be made completely famil- 
iar with the temper, tone and atmosphere of the 
people of another locality from a distance. Eng- 
lishmen may read of America, and Americans may 
read of England, and yet both Englishmen and 
Americans find, upon personal acquaintance with 
one country or the other, that there is a certain 
vaporish something that has not been communi- 
cated, or even brought much nearer, by steam, or 
photography, or electricity, but which makes all the 
difference. One may know all about the situation, 
the geology, the history, the fauna, the flora, the 
climate, the population, the industries, even the laws 



THE LAND OF COMPROMISE ^-j 

and customs of a place, and still miss entirely its 
personality — just as photographs, and letters, and 
the descriptions of a third person, cannot transfer 
the real presence of an individual. This some- 
thing, which explains how this vast Empire of jar- 
ring interests works at all, is this people's genius for 
politics and for governing, for conciliation and com- 
promise. They do get on somehow, there is no 
denying that, and thus far they have got on re- 
markably well. I think their passion for personal 
freedom has made them chary of treading on one an- 
other's toes, has made the give and take of living 
together a science, an intuitive possession of all of 
them, from the highest to the lowest. Each one 
realizes that he cannot have his place without leav- 
ing the other fellow in peace in his place. The 
philosophy of social convenience, though perhaps 
not a high phase of social economics, is, they feel, 
a comfortable working hypothesis. 

It is difficult with such a people to discover what 
are their ideals, what are their real likes and dis- 
likes, what they spend themselves for most willingly. 
The word "spend" may help us. Some of our 
expenditures may be simply silly, may have no 
significance. Benjamin Franklin tells us that he 
first learned economy when he discovered that he 
had paid too much for a whistle. Robert Louis 
Stevenson comments upon this by saying that what 
annoyed him in life was not that he sometimes paid 
too much for a whistle, but that he often found him- 
self the purchaser of a whistle that he did not want 
at all. But when we find an individual, or a nation, 



73 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

spending large sums persistently for this or that we 
cannot be wrong in supposing that here at last is 
a key to character. A man who year after year 
spends largely for vintage wines and delicate edibles 
can hardly make us believe that he is an ascetic. 
Money is the blood of the body domestic and the 
body politic. The individual may claim for him- 
self what virtues he will, the nation may assume to 
possess such high qualities as it will, but when one 
discovers how a household, or a nation, spends its 
money, one has something tangible to hang guesses 
at character upon. 

Even at the risk of wearying the reader, let us 
repeat some facts and figures as to the make-up of 
the population of England and Wales. It is com- 
posed of 15,728,613 males and 16,799,230 females, 
or a total population of 32,527,843- Unlike our 
population, it is to an extraordinary extent homoge- 
neous. There are only 247,758 foreigners in all 
amongst them. Of these foreigners some 82,000 
come from Russia and Russian Poland, 49,000 come 
from Germany, 20,000 from France, 20,000 from 
Italy, and something over 16,000 from the United 
States of America. London alone has a population 
of 7,113,561 (1906). Roughly divided into classes, 
the bulk of this population is made up as follows: 

MALE FKMALE TOTA* 

Professional Classes . . . 651,543 321,142 972,685 

Domestic Servants . . . 304,i95 1,690,722 1,994,9^7 

Commercial i,779,685 78,769 1,858,454 

Agricultural and Fishing . 1,094,765 57,73© i,i52,495 

Industrial 6,326,788 2,023,388 8,350,176 

Unoccupied 1,977,283 9,017,884 10,995,167 



THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 79 

In 1 901, seventy-seven per cent of the population 
was urban, and twenty-three per cent rural. 

They are a pious people, or lay claim to be. 
There are some 28,000 clergymen of the Church of 
England, and about the same number of priests, 
nuns, preachers, ministers, and lay-readers, or about 
one for every five hundred and eighty men, women 
and children in the island. All along their coast 
men and women are forbidden to go in bathing 
together, and a man may not accompany his own 
wife into the water. In the great city of London 
everything closes at a half hour after midnight, and 
you are driven from the restaurants and cafes into 
the street. On the other hand, England in a fit 
of mawkish prudery rescinded the Contagious Dis- 
eases Act, and hundreds of her soldiers and sailors 
are always in hospital as a consequence; and Lon- 
don streets are free day and night to perambulating 
disease, which bedizens itself with baits for the un- 
wary. The other day a workman's widow and 
children were virtually deprived of any real com- 
pensation, under the Workmen's Compensation Act 
of 1906, by being obHged to share it with a number 
of his real, or supposed, illegitimate children. 

There is now under discussion (1908) in Parlia- 
ment a new Licensing Act. On the first of Jan- 
uary, 1908, there were in England and Wales 95, 
700 licenses, or 27.62 per 10,000 of the total pop- 
ulation. It would seem fair enough, in all con- 
science, to decrease this number, even though 
certain vested interests in the beer and liquor trade 
lost some revenue by the operation. One would 
think that at least the bishops and clergy would be 



8o ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

unanimous in favor of such a bill. Not at all. 
They are divided, and one bishop at least, there 
may be others, has already written a letter denounc- 
ing the bill on the ground that investors in brewery 
shares would lose by the passage of the bill. Ap- 
parently even the spiritual lords of the church can- 
not overcome the national obsession of keeping the 
main chance ever in view. This bishop holds with 
Frederick the Great that: "Hier muss ein jeder 
nach seiner Fafon selig werden." 

If a brewer, when he sells enough beer, is made 
a peer, no wonder the average bishop is confused, 
and concludes, as do all Englishmen, that Doctor 
Johnson was right when he said that "there are few 
ways in which a man can be more innocently em- 
ployed than in getting money." They spend four 
pounds sterling per head for drink, or some $750, 
000,000 a year, and in the year 1906-7 the navy 
cost $157,170,000. The revenue derived from ex- 
cise taxes, exclusive of additional beer and spirit 
duties, collected for local authorities is $151,750, 
000 (1906-7). In 1906 these people drank 1,223, 
187,000 imperial gallons of beer, or 28 gallons each, 
for every man, woman and child, including the tee- 
totalers. In addition they drank 39,264,000 gallons 
of spirits, and 13,278,000 gallons of wine; not to 
mention that they used 269,503,000 pounds of tea, 
or a little over six pounds per head. 

The statement made in a previous page, that 
this Christian country spends its money for drink, 
sport, and war, now proves to be not malicious, or 
even harsh, it is merely true; for during the last 
year (1906-7) they spent the colossal sum of con- 



THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 81 

siderably over a thousand million dollars for drink^ 
sport, and the navy, while the total national expen- 
diture for the same year was $697,076,250, which 
is much less than was spent for drink alone! As 
an offset to this, there is a State Church, worth in 
its own right over $500,000,000, and toward the 
support of which Mr. John Bull contributes some 
$36,000,000 a year. This little kingdom of 121,- 
115 square miles, with a population of only forty- 
odd millions, controlling possessions aggregating 
over 9,000,000 square miles, and a population of 
over 400,000,000, carries in addition, the burden of 
over 1,000,000 persons enrolled as paupers; is taxed 
to the amount of $75,000,000 a year for their sup- 
port, and spends nearly $20,000,000 a year under 
the general head of Law and Justice to keep her 
population in order. When, in addition to these ex- 
penditures, it is recalled that John Bull has a 
national debt now standing at $3,870,823,520 gross, 
$3,655,817,090 net; on which he pays interest 
annually to the amount of $142,500,000, the won- 
der of the student of his affairs grows apace. For 
these are nice round sums for any nation to spend, 
no matter how rich, when it is remembered that 
they are expenditures which are in no sense pro- 
ductive. 

Drink $750,000,000 

Sport 220,000,000 

Navy 157,000,000 

Paupers 75,000,000 

Interest National Debt 142,000,000 

$1,344,000,000 



82 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

Estimating the population at 40,000,000, these 
figures mean an annual expenditure of $366 per 
head for every man, woman and child on whistles 
that they ought not to want, at any rate in such pro- 
fusion as this. Indeed this is proved beyond cavil 
by the fact that 361 out of every 400 of the pop- 
ulation die leaving less than $1,500. Much as we 
may believe in the wholesomeness of a sound glass 
of wine, firmly as I personally, at least, beheve in 
the value of sport, one cannot bring oneself to ac- 
cept such prodigal expenditures as these as nec- 
essary. It is a question indeed if they be not act- 
ually criminal, and bound ere long to bring disaster. 

Besides these expenditures there have arisen in 
the last few years a number of local bodies which 
are empowered to borrow and spend. The local 
debt in England and Wales in the last thirty years 
has risen from $460,000,000 to over $2,250,000,000. 
The expenditures of local bodies in the last twenty 
years have risen from $275,000,000 to $700,000,- 
000; indeed the local bodies in England and Vv^ales 
are spending more each year than the Imperial 
Government of the United Kingdom. The Na- 
tional net expenditure in 1870 was $308,373,880; 
in 1890 it was $396,662,605; in 1900 it was $643,- 
170,720; and in 1907, $657,731,250. The national 
expenditure has more than doubled since 1870, and 
has risen 50 per cent in a dozen years. The prin- 
cipal items of increase are: 

NATIONAI. ARMY AND 

DEBT SERVICE NAVY 

1870 $134,922,655 $113,742,275 

1907 158,090,460 285,772,880 



THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 83 



ELEMENTARY CIVIL 

EDUCATION SERVICE 



1870 $ 6,029,540 $29,724,585 

1907 77,137,230 46,996,895 

These vast increases matter not at all if the na- 
tional wealth and prosperity increase at the same 
ratio, but what is the answer to that question? It 
is an answer full of peril for England. Income, 
subject to income tax, in Great Britain in 1892, 
amounted to $2,685,756,000; in 1905 it amounted 
to $3,096,640,485; an increase of only $410,884,- 
485. The income subject to income tax in Prussia 
increased in those same years from $1,490,349,405 
to $2,505,205,115. There is no German income 
tax, and these are merely the figures for Prussia. 
There should be added, therefore, about 50 per 
cent for the whole of Germany. British income 
subject to tax has increased 15 per cent, while in 
Germany it has increased 60 per cent. British 
savings banks deposits from 1901 to 1907 increased 
$85,000,000; while German savings banks deposits 
increased $860,000,000 during the same period. 

Figures are of small value as dry bones, but 
clothed in flesh and blood they become personal- 
ities. These few figures mean that England's 
wealth has increased by no more than the popu- 
lation, it has remained stationary in short; while 
in the rival country, Germany, it has increased by 
60 per cent. British expenditure must go on in- 
creasing for army, navy, and education, if for no 
other reason than as a defence against war and 
commercial invasion. These figures therefore pre- 



84 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

sent a problem that cannot be laughed away. If 
the income tax and death duties are to be increased, 
then capital, which is the very blood of increased 
commercial and industrial prosperity, is gradually 
thinned and weakened. I have the good author- 
ity of an eminent English financier for stating that 
the English income from her foreign investments of 
$15,960,000,000 amounts to $698,955,000 a year; 
and that foreigners pay the EngHsh for carriage of 
freight about $450,000,000 annually, 'but even this fine 
total of $1,148,955,000 income is not compensating 
England for the surpassing onrush of prosperity in 
America and Germany. Indeed it is becoming every 
day more and more apparent that the activity of Brit- 
ish capital abroad is not compensating for the inac- 
tivity of the British working-man at home. As we have 
said before, not to go ahead is to fall behind, and Eng- 
land for the first time in her history is falling behind. 

This enormous income from foreign investments too 
is a bad rather than a good sign, since it means that 
English capital is drifting away from use in England, 
and for the employment of English labor, to assist in 
the development of rival industries in foreign lands. 

There must needs be colossal strength and pluck, 
marvellous financial elasticity, unbounded confi- 
dence, tremendous earning power, and a vast reser- 
voir of national virtue somewhere, to explain these 
huge incongruities. One begins to understand the 
reasons for the nonchalant self-satisfaction of the 
EngHsh, which Germans, Frenchmen, Americans, 
and others, are fain to call conceit, or obstinacy, 
or stupidity, as the occasion demands. 



THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 85 

One may note just here the curious fiction that 
England is the land of free food, a fiction, but 
firmly believed both at home and abroad by the 
uninformed. As a matter of fact the receipts from 
customs duties upon the things that the English 
eat, drink, and smoke, plus the excise taxation of 
them, make together much the largest item of the 
Imperial revenue of the United Kingdom. Let us 
look at the figures. For the ten years ending 
March 31, 1898-1907: 

NET RECEIPTS FROM CUSTOMS 

Tobacco and Snuff . $608,500,000 

Tea 289,000,000 

Spirits 218,000,000 

Sugar (last six years only) 175,500,000 

Wine 69,500,000 

Currants, etc., 21,000,000 

Com and Grain (two years only) 12,000,000 

Coffee 9,000,000 

Total $1,402,500,000 

NET RECEIPTS FROM EXCISE 

Spirits $884,500,000 

Beer 629,500,000 

Total Net Receipts from Customs and Excise $2,916,500,000 

This works out at an average of $291,650,000 
yearly, or at $5,605,000 weekly, or at the rate of 
$690 yearly per 100 of the population during the 
last ten years. When it becomes thus apparent 
that the English are taxed for what they eat, drink, 



86 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

and smoke at the rate of over $5,000,000 a week, 
the fiction of free food is blown to the winds, and 
the Land of Compromises rejoices in the possession 
of yet another strange contradiction which troubles 
nobody, and which is still used by politician and 
layman aHke as though this at least were one of the 
fundamental truths of their insular social economy. 

These brief glimpses of the expenditures, bur- 
dens and responsibilities of Mr, Bull explain why 
that gentleman's portrait shows a broad, red-faced, 
big-waisted, heavy-shouldered, piano-legged coun- 
tryman, with a bulldog at his heels. Note the 
bulldog! The characteristics of the bulldog are 
that he is slow to anger, but once he takes hold 
he never lets go till you break his jaws or scald 
him nearly to death with boiling water. 

Only a slow man, a safe man, a man without 
nerves, who can eat and drink copiously, and sleep 
dreamlessly, and shake off annoyances easily, can 
keep his place in the world with such burdens upon 
his shoulders. And when we look a bit further 
into his house-keeping accounts we find this to be 
the case. He spends some $380,000,000 a year 
for bread. In 1906 he used 267,022,000 bushels 
of wheat, and wheat products, or 6.12 bushels per 
head; $190,000,000 for butter and cheese; $405,- 
000,000 for milk, sugar, tea, coffee and cocoa, and 
he washes these down, and some millions of tons 
of beef, mutton, pork, rice, potatoes besides, with 
heavy malt liquors, brandy, gin, whiskey, and 
wine, which cost him $750,000,000 a year. And 
everywhere, from highest to lowest, the wasteful- 



THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 87 

tiess and the bad cooking, and the spoiling of good 
materials, go on apace, to the astonishment and 
horror of every Continental who visits England. 

Mr. Bull is apparently not greatly disturbed by 
these significant figures. Here and there a voice 
is raised to protest or to warn, but the voice of the 
professionally patriotic politician is always louder 
in denial. The political Cleopatra is always ready 
to put a broiled fish on the populace Antony's 
hook. Who could have made a French statesman 
at the end of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth 
believe that within an hundred years France would 
be in the financial gutter, begging for a loan from 
Messrs. Baring, and Labouchere in London! Who 
would dare whisper such a thing in regard to Eng- 
land to-day, lest he be laughed out of court! 

On the contrary, England is the most hopeful 
of all the nations. There is less pohtical pessi- 
mism than in France, Germany, Russia, Italy, or 
even in America. There is less of that fatigued 
way of looking at things here than in the rest of 
Europe. Compare the speeches delivered in and 
out of ParHament by politicians big and httle, 
with the speeches of politicians delivered elsewhere 
at this moment in the world and one is impressed 
first of all by their healthier tone. Every now and 
again in Germany, in France, and in America, 
there is an undertone of discouragement, of despair, 
as of men whose nerves had collapsed and left them 
peevish. Though the problems here are faced as 
courageously and discussed as frankly as elsewhere, 
there is no throwing up of hands in despair, no dys- 



88 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

peptic politics, to put it briefly. The men in control, 
I judge from the look of them, are men who eat, 
and drink, and sleep, and play more than the men 
of other nations, and their nerves are not so close 
to the surface. They remain youthful longer than 
we do. 

A quicker, more sensitive, less easy-going, less 
good-natured individual than John Bull would be 
goaded into extreme measures by some of the prec- 
edent-supported blundering in his political and 
economic household. The moment one investi- 
gates the poor-laws, the ecclesiastical system, the 
school arrangements, — now in a worse tangle than 
ever — the method of administering justice, one is 
forced to admire the rough optimism which can sub- 
mit good-humoredly to the awkwardness of methods 
which are retained merely because they are the 
methods of the forefathers. Factory hands, small 
farmers, clerks, shop-keepers, laborers, farm hands, 
employes in factories, mines, and other industries, 
even in the country towns where there is no excuse 
for crowding, hve in small, badly arranged, and 
badly ventilated houses, with no conveniences; such 
as hardly exist in either the city or the country dis- 
tricts of America. 

In the time of Henry the Eighth, one-fifth of ail 
the land in England was in the possession of the 
church. Much of it was then, and has been since 
then, distributed by royal favor and royal grants. 
Go where one will in England, even to-day, and upon 
questioning the inhabitants of this town or that 
as regards the ownership of the land, one finds that 



THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 89 

a very few people are in possession of all the land, 
and not only the farmers but the townspeople them- 
selves are their tenants. These landlords have in- 
herited, or purchased, these large holdings, first, be- 
cause in years gone by land rents paid well, and, 
secondly, because peculiar social advantages and 
certain definite political preferences, as well as di- 
rect political influence over the tenants, went with, 
and still go with, the land. Men who make a for- 
tune almost without exception invest a part of it in 
country estates, and lay the foundations for social 
and poKtical power in this or that county. Many 
of England's large landowners to-day are compar- 
atively new people of this type. So far as this mat- 
ter of land is concerned, it is a burning question in 
Ireland, in Scotland, and in England at this very 
day. The great, very great, majority of English- 
men have not a square foot of land they may call 
their own, they are tenants, and they pay $5cx),ooo,- 
000a year rent divided as follows: 

From Farm Lands $175,000,000 

" Lands Bearing Dwelling-Houses, Factories 

Business Premises, etc., 255,000,000 

" Sporting Rents, etc., 5,000,000 

" Mines, Quarries, etc 35,000,000 

" Other Property 30,000,000 

This fact becomes the more clear, and one may 
add the more lugubrious, when we know that the 
whole area of the United Kingdom measures 77,000,- 
000 acres, and nearly 77,000,000 are in the hands of 
a comparatively small number of owners. 



90 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 



For En] 
follows : 

NUMBER 

OF OWNERS 

400 . 

1,288 . 

2,529 • 

9,585 . 

24,412 . 

217,049 . 

703,289 . 

14,459 • 



jland and Wales alone the figures are as 



CLASS OF OWNERS 

Peers and Peeresses 
Great Landowners 
Squires . . . 
Greater Yeomen 
Lesser Yeomen. 
Small Proprietors 
Cottagers . . 
Public Bodies . 
Waste Land . 



5,729,97^ 
8,497,699 

4,319,271 
4,782,627 
4,144,272 
3,931,806 
151,148 
1,443,548 
1,524,624 

In short, more than half the area of England and 
Wales is owned by a few thousand people. Of the 
77,000,000 acres, 40,426,900, or more than one-half, 
are owned by 2,500 persons, and 38,200 persons own 
three-fourths of the total land area of England and 
Wales. 

That this arrangement is not satisfactory goes 
without saying, and various legislative measures are 
proposed, some of which are now under discus- 
sion in Parliament, to remedy this injustice. In 
France the rural population is 65 per cent and the 
urban population 35 per cent. In Great Britain 
the census returns for 1891 showed that 71.7 per 
cent of the population was urban and 28.3 per cent 
rural, while in 1901 the drift from the land had still 
further increased, 77 per cent of the population be- 
ing classed as urban and only 23 per cent rural. 

After Henry the Eighth had deprived the monas- 
teries and the high church dignitaries of their land, 
land became plentiful. Vast tracts of ground were 
thrown open to the acquisition of lay proprietors. 



TIJK LAND OF COMPROMISE 91 

Indeed these released estates in the days of Queen 
Elizabeth were so plentiful that an act was passed 
obliging every man who built a cottage to "lay 
four acres of land thereto." The cottager thus was 
forced by law to become a small farmer, and as we 
have seen in other chapters these small farmers were 
the defence of England. It is hard to believe that 
such a state of things, as regards the land, ever 
existed, when we see how to-day the land is back 
again in the hands of a very few owners. 

Thus it is seen that the first, fundamental, and 
unavoidable payment by an Englishman is always 
for rent. In addition to this, with great good nat- 
ure, he submits to the most ridiculous poor law in 
the world, a compound of socialism, sentimental 
philanthropy, and outgrown custom, by which he is 
taxed enormously for the support of the poor. 

Up to 1834 the matter of poor law relief had been 
going from bad to worse, until at last the land was 
taxed so heavily for the support of the poor, who of 
course increase exactly in proportion to the relief 
offered, not only in England but everywhere else as 
well, that the farmers could not afford to cultivate 
it. Then came a change and a gradual remodelling 



of legislation. 








POPULATION 


PAUPERS 


EXPENDITURES 


In 1841 . 


. 15,914,148 


1,299,048 


$23,804,645 


" 1851 . 


. . 17,927,609 


941,315 


24,813,520 


" 1861 . 


. . 20,066,224 


883,921 


28,894,715 


" 1871 . 


. 22,712,266 


1,037,360 


39,433,620 


" 1881 . 


. 25,974,439 


773,198 


40,075,050 


" 1891 . 


. 29,002,525 


728,042 


43,216,590 


" 1901 . 


. . 32,527,843 


778,084 


57,744,425 



92 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

The total number of paupers receiving relief on 
January the first, 1907, was 920,838, while the total 
cost of relief of the poor for the fiscal year 1906 was 
$70,251,310. 

These sums of money are, it must not be for- 
gotten, quite outside the enormous sums expended 
in private charities. The city of London alone, it 
is calculated, contributes more than $25,000,000 a 
year in private charity, and the various temperance 
societies also, and they are a drop in the bucket 
among charities, spend every year an amount repre- 
sented by a capital of $12,000,000, in a rather LiH- 
putian attempt to prevent the Brobdignagian British 
giant from lifting his costly $750,000,000 drinking 
cup to his lips. Only the rich man can own land in 
a country where thirty-two million people spend 
such sums for drink and over seventy million dollars 
a year for the official relief, and almost as much 
more for the private care, of their shirkers, incom- 
petents, and helpless; and where land itself cannot 
be bought at its agricultural or productive value, but 
must be paid for at the artificial valuation that it 
has acquired through this feudalistic desire on the 
part of rich men to become great landowners. 

When one hears, and one does hear it on every 
hand just now, how poor are Englishmen, one has 
in this land question some explanation of the secret. 
It is not only a material and mechanical change that 
has taken place but a spiritual change. Democracy 
under one name or another is in the air just now. 
Men can have land, and liberty; that has been 
proved. And many more men want it. The tenants 



THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 93 

on large estates fifty years ago were, to all practical 
intents and purposes, political and economic slaves, 
and to some extent they are slaves still. They find 
more rights and more freedom in the cities, and they 
flock thither; and it is this combination of democ- 
racy and landholding by a few that has so radically 
changed the grouping of the population of Great 
Britain, till now 77 per cent live in cities, and only 
23 per cent in the country. 

Whether as a result of this or no the birth rate 
has been steadily decreasing, until 1907 showed 
the lowest birth rate on record. Pauperism in- 
creases, the deportation of men increases, expendi- 
ture for drink increases, expenditures national and 
local increase, while the national wealth remains at 
a standstill, and the birth rate decreases. 

One is led naturally enough to inquire what the 
church, with its bishops in the House of Lords, and 
its twenty-eight thousand clergy, is doing to modify, 
or even to influence, this condition of affairs. Here 
again, one is surprised to find only conciliation, com- 
promise, and optimism at work. Even in the realm 
of spiritual and ethical things, the immediately feasi- 
ble is the watchword. The land question is an im- 
portant factor in all ecclesiastical problems to begin 
with, since the church is a landowner, and because 
the ecclesiastical system includes as many incon- 
gruities and contradictions as can well be imagined. 
It has been said of it that it has a Catholic ritual, 
a Calvinistic creed, and an Arminian clergy, which is 
true enough for a witticism. A more savage critic- 
ism is that of Jowett, who, writing to Caird, said: 



94 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

"In another ten years half the Engh'sh clergy will 
be given up to a fetish priest-worship of the Sacra- 
ment." This prophecy has come true to a sufficient 
extent at least to cause grave trouble. The Church 
of England holds fast to the three orders of the clergy, 
to tactual succession, and, until recently when an 
act of Parliament made it possible for a clergyman 
to become again a layman, to the indelibility of its 
ordinations. And yet the two archbishops, and all 
the bishops, are practically appointed by the Prime 
Minister, who may be, as we have seen, a Jew, a 
Unitarian, or an Agnostic. 

In the United States of America one church differs 
from another only in being a little better than any 
other. The men and women of each congregation 
control the church property, the minister, alas, being 
all too often considered as church property as well, 
and choose their own minister. Even in the Ameri- 
can Episcopal Church, any particular bishop would 
find it difficult to interfere successfully with any 
particular congregation's choice of a rector. There 
is, too, in too many of these congregations, a notice- 
able, not to say very remarkable alliance between 
wealth and goodness, since the church officers are 
almost invariably the wealthier men in the congre- 
gation. 

The American notion of a church as a club, or 
as a social ladder, does not obtain in England, ex- 
cept that there is perhaps a tendency on the part of 
men grown rich to leave the dissenters' chapel for 
the more aristocratic ministrations of the church. 
Why a man or woman who enters a church to wor 



THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 95 

ship God should be warmly greeted and, later on, 
gradually entertained socially, as though this were a 
usual quality and manifestation of the Kingdom of 
Heaven, a prevalent notion in America, has not as 
yet dawned upon these dull Enghsh people. That a 
woman should seek social recognition through mem- 
bership in the altar-guild; or worship in and serve 
the parish, with an eye to dinners and dances; or 
that a man should be ostentatiously deeply, darkly 
blue in his orthodoxy, and at the same time peddle 
bonds that he knows to be of easy financial virtue 
amongst his friends, is a refinement of ecclesiastical- 
social diplomacy to which they have not attained. 

Mr. John Bull says his prayers under totally dif- 
ferent auspices. The majority of the churches of 
England are private property. When a large es- 
tate is purchased, the parish church or churches 
go with the other property. The landlord, or the 
patron of the livings, as he is called with reference 
to his relations to his church property, chooses the 
clergyman for every parish on his property, and sees 
to it that the revenue attaching thereto goes to him. 
He can sell this church living or let it to whom he 
will, and although each incumbent is put over the 
parish for life, at his death the patron may again 
bestow it upon someone else. So secure was this 
tenure of the parson in his parish that it is only re- 
cently that an act of Parliament permitted his dis- 
missal, even for drunkenness or debt. 

The people of a parish have well-defined rights to 
the services of the parson, to sittings in the church, 
to burial in the churchyard, and to the sacraments, 



96 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

but to little more. George William Thomas Brud- 
enell Bruce, fourth Marquis of Ailesbury, who died 
some years ago, was the patron of nine such livings. 
He married a girl of unexceptionable immorality from 
the variety stage, was part owner of several music 
halls, and added to his notoriety by being ruled off 
every race-track in England, as a cheat and a black- 
guard. There is always a large number of these 
livings for sale, which are advertised just as are 
other investments. A wealthy man's daughter mar- 
ries a clergyman, and the father, if he be of the right 
sort, purchases one of these livings and presents it as 
a wedding gift. In families where there are one or 
more of these livings, one of the sons becomes a cler- 
gyman, just to keep that much income in the family. 
A clergyman with capital at his disposal, invests 
some of it in such a purchase, and enjoys the income 
thereof, and an agreeable way of exercising his pro- 
fessional energies, at the same time. Younger sons 
were wont to take to this profession, and with reason, 
since it is the only one in which a man may retain 
all the prerogatives and privileges of a gentleman, 
and have all the amenities of social courtesy shown 
him, without the possession or expenditure of money. 
On finding out this much about the State Church 
of England, one expects to find one thing, and finds 
quite another. Again, somehow, the machinery 
works. In the city, and in the country districts as 
well, these men are the dullest men in the pulpit, 
and the most companionable men out of it, to be 
found anywhere. They work hard and conscien- 
tiously, most of them, and are, as a rule, popular, 



THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 97 

very often indeed the most popular, and with the 
greatest influence for good in their several com- 
munities. The demand for the disestablishment of 
the church is seldom bolstered by any argument 
nowadays from the laxness or incompetence of the 
clergy. The demand is based rather upon such 
arguments as these: that the State should represent 
the whole people in reHgious as in other matters; 
that ParHament is not a fit body to deal with church 
matters; that estabhshments obstruct poHtical and 
social reforms; and that established churches being 
subject to State control cannot possess a certain 
necessary liberty of adaptation. 

In the last quarter of a century the Established 
Church has collected and spent an enormous sum, 
estimated at some $450,000,000, in domestic and 
foreign missions, in renovating old churches, in es- 
tablishing new ones, and in founding and support- 
ing institutions for carrying on the different branches 
of its work. The church population of England is 
estimated to be about half the total population; and 
whatever be the comparative strength in numbers 
of the EstabHshed and Dissenting Churches, there 
can be no question of the superior influence of the 
28,000 clergy of the State Church. Whether the 
system be right or wrong, these clergymen are, man 
for man, stronger men than the dissenting ministers, 
and not only in the palaces but in the slums also, 
they wield a more constant control. In spite of 
Ruskin's bitter comment: "Our national rehgion 
is the performance of church ceremonies and preach- 
ing of soporific truths (or untruths) to keep the mob 



98 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

quietly at work while we amuse ourselves," it must 
be admitted that to-day, either because the fear of 
disestablishment stares them in the face, or because 
attendance at church has wofully decreased, while 
indifference and unbelief have increased, the clergy 
are an energetic, hard-working, and sincere body of 
men. 

But what if they were a far greater power for 
good than they are! What if they were not divided 
among themselves as to ritual, exegesis, and theol- 
ogy, as well as upon outside questions of education, 
the licensing bill and other matters! They would 
even then be overwhelmed and lost in the sea of 
troubles that confront them. They are as a pitchfork 
against the sea. 

Of what education is doing to paUiate these evils 
we have seen in another chapter, and it is little 
enough. 

Mr. Balfour, the late Prime Minister, says: "The 
existing educational system of this country is cha- 
otic, is ineffectual, is utterly behind the age, makes 
us the laughing-stock of every advanced nation in 
Europe and America, puts us behind not only our 
American cousins, but the German, and the French- 
man, and the Italian." 

The truth of the matter is that the whole Imperial 
situation has so changed in the last fifty years that 
the old makeshifts and compromises no longer 
suffice to meet the situation. 

In i860 the United States was on the verge of a 
four years' struggle for national unity, and England 
was looking on, the majority of her citizens believing 



THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 99 

that the end of the Republic was in sight. Even 
Gladstone was an investor in Confederate bonds. 
Germany was not even a nation. Japan was known 
to the outside world as a gentle, courteous people, 
still steeped in feudalism and proficient in delicate 
iron and enamel work. 

What EngHshman thought then that America 
would produce so much steel and iron that she could 
afford to undersell the EngHshman at his own door ? 
In those dark days what EngHshman dreamed that 
the RepubHc across the water would produce 2,592,- 
320,000 bushels of corn, or 78.8 of the world's total 
production; 634,087,000 bushels of wheat, or 20.7 
of the world's entire crop; 13,346,000 bales of cot- 
ton, or 71.3 of the world's total; 25,780,000 tons of 
pig iron, or 42.2 of the world's total; 162,600,000 
barrels of petroleum, or 62.5 of the total supply; 
918,000,000 pounds of copper, or 57.5 of the total 
supply; $89,620,000 of gold, or 22.1 of the world's 
total output; and $37,914,000 of silver, or 35.5 of 
the total; 298,859 tons of sulphur, or 35.8 of the 
total; 455,000,000 tons of coal, or 37.3 of the world's 
supply? Since those days the United States has 
grown portentously. With an area of 5.9 of the 
world's, and a population of 5.2, we supply 43 per 
cent of the world's total production of wheat, corn, 
and oats. We mine 35.5 per cent of the world's 
silver, 22.1 of the gold, and have 21 per cent of the 
cotton spindles. What EngHshman, with the Ar- 
mada and Trafalgar in mind, believed that Germany 
would build ship for ship with him, and give him 
anxiety as to his island's safety from her attack? 



loo ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

What Englishman dreamed that he would rejoice 
to see his country the ally of pagan Japan, become a 
naval power to be reckoned with? 

The world has changed, but he has changed least 
of all. He has as little sympathy as ever with the 
foreigner. He cannot see what these changes mean. 
Even the one solution of the problem right at hand, 
namely an Imperial Federation, with a wise scheme 
of tariff regulations binding together his vast in- 
terests all over the world, is made almost hopeless 
by his complacent condescension toward the colo- 
nials. Ask the Canadian how he likes the Eng- 
lishman, not the poHtician, not the panderer who 
speaks for publication, but the man in the street. I 
have heard the answer an hundred times. I have 
heard it in Cape Breton, and from there all the way 
to Vancouver, and it is not reassuring. Ask the 
AustraHan how he enjoys a visit to England, and 
what hospitahty he receives there. Ask the South 
African how he looks upon the Home Government, 
which has handed him over to his enemies again. 
He will probably tell you the story of a certain hus- 
band's view of compromise. He was complaining 
to a friend that he liked to sleep between cotton 
sheets, but that his wife preferred linen sheets. He 
found linen sheets cold and disagreeable and they 
could not agree. "What do you do about it, how 
do you arrange matters,'' asked his friend. "Oh, 
we compromise!" replied the husband; "we use 
linen sheets!" 

Oh, we'll compromise, says England to her South 
African colonist, and hands him over to the Boers. 



THE LAND OF COMPROMISE loi 

One hears vague tales, too, of Indian princes, not 
talking for publication, who are restless and dissat- 
isfied, and of a semi-educated Indian populace de- 
manding some share in government. Of all follies, 
the worst is a system of bringing these Indians to 
England, educating them, entertaining them, let- 
ting them dance and flirt with their women, permit- 
ting at least one of them to marry an English lady, 
and then sending them back to India to live in 
dependence, and as the inferior of the least impor- 
tant British official. Is it any wonder that this com- 
promise brings anger and dissatisfaction? 

Close at home, it is the same easy compromise. 
A palpable disproportion of Irish members in the 
House of Commons, but servitude for Ireland. 
(The Irish point of view.) 

A State Church, some of whose members ancj 
leaders take sides with the brewers against temper- 
ance reform. Years of wrangling between Church- 
men, Catholics, and Nonconformists over the school 
question. 

National unanimity in playing ostrich, and burying 
their heads in the sand on the question of England's 
continued commercial supremacy. 

Always wide advertising of the fact that England 
still leads in the volume and value of her export 
and import trade over Germany, or the United 
States, or other rivals, but no honest analysis of the 
facts. 

What boots it how fast England goes ahead, if 
her rivals go ahead faster than she does? What a 
silly fellow we should dub the youth who congratu- 



102 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

lates himself upon having grown so much stronger, 
so much heavier, so much taller in ten years, if all 
his rivals had during that time grown even stronger, 
heavier and taller than he. Between 1886 and 1906 
Germany increased her exports of manufactured 
goods $415,000,000. During the same period Eng- 
land increased hers $300,000,000. Far more im- 
portant even than that, Germany is keeping her men 
at work in her industries and on her soil. In 1894 
Germany exported 26 out of every 10,000, in 1907 
she exported 4 out of every 10,000 men. In 1894 
England exported 9 out of every 10,000 men, in 1907 
she exported 40 out of every 10,000 men. Between 
1903 and 1907 the increase of men leaving England 
for other countries was 61 per cent and unemploy- 
ment was greater in 1907 than for ten years pre- 
viously. 

It must be exasperating to the Germans to read 
the English papers, which comment in sorrowful 
tones upon Germany's debtj Germany's deficit, and 
Germany's financial difficulties generally, in a tone 
of aloofness and self-satisfaction. One would sup- 
pose England had no debt, that England's total ex- 
port and import trade had not decreased during the 
one year 1908 by $570,000,000, that England was 
not taxed to death, that England was not drink mad. 
It is no concern of ours. England is our play- 
ground, and the English our inexhaustible source 
of amusement, but it is not to be wondered at that 
the Continent wearies sometimes of England's con- 
stant suggestions that she is not as others are. The 
temple of the world has echoed and re-echoed for 



THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 103 

many years now with the Pharisee's prayer, and the 
accent is unmistakably cockney. 

Germany in the twenty years of the present Em- 
peror's reign has increased her population from forty- 
eight millions to sixty-three millions. A compari- 
son between the three countries, Great Britain, Ger- 
many, and the United States shows the long strides 
the rivals of Great Britain are making. 



EXPORTS 

OT. B. GBR. U. S. 

1890. In millions of j^ 26^ 163 176 

1907. " " 426 326 386 

Percentage of gain during period ... 62 116 no 

These exports for the three countries relate to domestic ex- 
ports only, while under the head of imports, the German figures 
relate to imports for consumption, while the British and United 
States figures relate to general imports. There is little differ- 
ence between the general imports and imports for consumption 
in the case of Germany and the United States. In the case of 
Great Britain accurate figures of imports for consumption are 
not available. The British authorities, however, have been 
publishing for several years past figures of so-called net im- 
ports, i. e., general imports less exports of foreign and colonial 
produce, the difference approximating nearly the scope of the 
"special imports" given by the statistical offices of the Eui-opean 
continent and the United States. 

The total exports of Great Britain in 1890 in millions of £ 
were 328, and in 1907, 517. The percentage of gain, therefore, 
during the period was 57, or rather less than the percentage of 
gain for domestic exports only. The general exports of Ger- 
nany (exclusive of the movement of precious metals) in 1890 



104 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

in millions of £ were i8o and in 1907, ^66, or a percentage of 
gain of 96. 

IMPORTS— UNITED KINGDOM 

1890 1907 

Total ;^42o,69i,997 ;^645,8o7,942 

Net total imports less re- 
exports 355,970,464 553>865,858 

The percentage of gain during the period in the total imports 
was 53, and in the net 55. 



IMPORTS— GERMANY 

1890 J907 

General ^^221,495,830 £470,018,583 

Special 203,820,416 420,046,083 

The percentage of gain during the period in general imports 
was 112, and in special imports 106. 



IMPORTS— THE UNITED STATES 

1890 1907 

General ;^i62,i92,625 £294,754,222 

Special 157,342,791 290,846,046 

The percentage of gain during the period in general imports 
was 82, and in special imports 84. 

These figures have been so frequently quoted, and have 
brought so many inquiries to both author and publishers, that 
they are given in detail. The authorities quoted are: Statistical 
Abstract for the United Kingdom, No. 48, page 49, and No. 57, 
page 69. Statistisches Handbuch, Part 2, pages 9 and 13, and 
Statistisches Jahrbuch fur das Deutsche Reich, vol. 29, 1908, 
page 125. Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1909, pages 
414, 450, and 506. 



THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 105 

DOMESTIC EXPORTS OF MANUFACTURES 

1890 1907 

United Kingdom, in millions of ;i^ .... 225,4 342.0 

Germany, in millions of ;i^ 109 . 6 236.4 

United States, in millions of ;^ 37.3 154.2 

The percentage of gain during the period was for the 

United Kingdom 52 

Germany 116 

United States 316 

The original data of the German Imperial Statistical Office — 
Statistisches Handbuch fiir das Deutsche Reich, page 11, and 
Statistisches Jahrbuch fiir das Deutsche Reich, 1908, vol. 
29, page 125 — are 2,147,500,000 marks (=;^io5,6oo,ooo) and 
4,808,900,000 marks (=;^236,40o,ooo), respectively. Owing 
to reclassification of the articles constituting the four large 
groups into which the German imports and exports are divided, 
the 1907 amount of manufactures exported has been reduced to 
4,638,100,000 marks (=;£228,ooo,ooo), in the 1910 issue of the 
Jahrbuch. 

POPULATION 

GREAT BRITAIN GERMANY UNITED STATES 

1890 37,400,000 49,400,000 62,600,000 

1907 44,000,000 62,300,000 88,000,000 

Percentage of increase 
during period ... 19 26 42 



EMIGRATION 

BRITISH GERMAN 

1890 218,116 97,000 

1907 395,680 31,600 

The printed British jQgures of emigration represent the excess 
of outward over inward passengers of British nationality des- 
tined for non-European countries, while the German figures rep- 
resent the number of emigrants of German nationality to all 



io6 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

destinations, reported officially to the German statistical office. 
The German authorities do not take cognizance of any but out- 
ward emigrant traffic, while the printed British figures are 
based upon data of both outward and inward movements of 
British passengers of all classes. The figures here given are 
therefore for the outward movement of British passengers to 
extra-European destinations. No figures are available for 
British steerage passengers or British emigrants only. 

GROSS RAILWAY RECEIPTS 





GT. B. 


GER. 


V. s. 


1890, in millions of ;^ . . 


• . 79-9 


64 


216. 1 


1907, " " . . 


. . 121. 5 


124.9 


522 


Percentage of increase . . 


. . 53 


93 


141 



For the German railways see Statistisches Handbuch fiir das 
Deutsche Reich, Part i, page 299, and Statistisches Jahrbuch fiir 
das Deutsche Reich, 1910, page 114. For the American railways 
see Statistics of Railways in the United States, 1891, page 74, 
and Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1909, page 273. 



CONSUMPTION OF COAL 

The British "Coal Tables," 1908-9, published by the Board 
of Trade in July, 1910 (271 — 1910), page 34, give the following 
consumption data for the three countries: 

GREAT BRITAIN GERMANY UNITED STATES 

LONG TONS LONG TONS LONG TONS 

1890 142,955,000 62,976,000 139,887,000 

1907 182,674,000 128,411,000 417,867,000 

Percentage of increase 

for the period . 28 106 200 

The German figures are exclusive of lignite, the consump- 
tion of which is officially stated as follows (Statistisches 
Handbuch fiir das Deutsche Reich, Part i, page 488, and 



THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 107 

Statistisches Jahrbuch fur das Deutsche Reich, 1910, page 
272): 

METRIC EQUIVALENT IN 

TONS LONG TONS 

1890 25,541,000 25,137,708 

1907 71,488,000 70,259,204 

Though the caloric value of lignite is much less than that of 
coal, this item ought not to be disregarded entirely. 

PRODUCTION OF PIG IRON 

GT. B. CER. U. S. 

1890, in millions of tons .... 7.9 4.6 9.2 

1907, " " .... 10. I 12.6 25.7 

Percentage of increase 27 174 179 

SAVINGS BANKS DEPOSITS 

GREAT BRITAIN 

1890 1907 

Trustee ;^43,65o,552 £52,153,595 

Post-oflSce 67,634,807 157,500,077 

Total ;^i 1 1,285,359 ;^209,653,672 

Government stock held: 

Trustee 1,280,069 2,481,023 

Post-office 4,680,167 20,533,897 

Grand total . . . ;^ii7,245,595 £232,668,592 
Percentage of increase of grand total 98 

UNITED STATES 

1890, in millions of ;^ 318 

1907, " " - " 718 

Percentage of increase 125 

GERMANY 

1890, in millions of ;;^ 252 

1907, 687 

Percentage of increase 172 



io8 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

For the figures for Great Britain see Statistical Abstract for 
the United Kingdom, No. 47, pages 218, 219, and 221, and 
No. 57, pages 325, 327, and 328. 

For the figures for the United States see Statistical Abstract 
of the United States, 1909, page 712. 

The figures for Germany are from the official figures of de- 
posits in all German savings banks, as presented to the Reichstag 
in 1908 in connection with the Finance Reform Bill (Materi- 
alien zur Beurteilung der Wohlstandsentwicklung Deutschlands, 
Anlagsband III, pages 18-19. 

With this condition of affairs in plain view, one 
party at least in the State is coquetting openly with 
socialism. Old-age pensions are now a fact and 
free food for school children is under discussion. 
Five shillings a week for those seventy years of age 
or over! Why not sixty- three years of age, why 
not fifty-five, why not Professor Osier's limit of 
forty years of age? Does any one suppose for a 
moment that the old fellows of sixty-five will not be 
jealous of the old fellows of seventy; and the old fel- 
lows of fifty-five of the old fellows of sixty! Up to 
December 31, 1908, the number of pensions actually 
granted was 596,038. Roughly speaking, one per- 
son out of every seventy is now in receipt of an old- 
age pension. Is human nature a different thing in 
this island? Will men save here who are being 
saved for? Will men work here when others must 
work for them? On the contrary, less here than in 
almost any other country. They are slow, stohd, 
cold-blooded, and selfish. A fight, or drink, or 
sport, these rouse them, but Httle else does. For 
the last twenty years the only compromise with the 



THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 109 

British workman has been that of the rest of the 
country sleeping between his sheets! His savings 
bank deposits are only some $265,000,000, and here 
it must be remembered that thousands of people who 
do not belong in any sense to the working classes use 
the savings banks for their savings. It would take 
three times this amount to pay his drink bill for one 
year. But nobody dares take his cup away from 
him. Instead of that it is proposed to promise him 
support in his old age, so that he need not save at the 
public house in the meanwhile. 

This matter of old-age pensions is an insidiously 
elastic form of outdoor relief, which will be stretched 
to suit the poHtical exigencies of the hour, and a very 
enticing invitation to shiftlessness, to trust in God 
and let the powder get damp. It is the beginning of 
the change of English attitude from frank and free 
individualism to the fashionable present-day effemi- 
nacy of State support. 

The important and the forbidding feature of this 
new departure of State aid is not the fact itself, or the 
method of working it out, or even the consequences, 
but the cause. Why is such legislation deemed 
necessary? In a nutshell the reason is this: The 
birth-rate is dropping as we have noted elsewhere. 
The birth-rate which twenty-five years ago was 36 
is now 28 to 26 per 1,000. The effect of this is that 
the number of the young has decreased in propor- 
tion to the whole population; while the modern 
lengthening of life has increased the proportion of 
the old. The number of children under fifteen has 
decreased so rapidly in the last twenty-five years 



no ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

that there are to-day 1,200,000 fewer in proportion 
to the whole population, while the proportion of the 
old to the total population, people over sixty years, 
has increased in the same time by 500,000. In 
short, the proportion of old people has increased by 
half a million, while the proportion of young people 
has decreased by nearly a million and a quarter. 
This is a serious matter anywhere, but to this manly 
and vigorous and self-reliant race it is, unless reme- 
died, the beginning of the end. It is this aspect of 
the situation which to the onlooker is much the most 
serious feature of this new legislation of support by 
the State. If the children are to be State educated, 
and the aged to be State supported, and tariff re- 
form is to follow to enable those between fifteen and 
sixty to make enough in forty-five years to be able 
to take care of the unfortunate young and the shift- 
less old as well as themselves, the whole complexion 
of British life is bound to change. Sturdy self-re- 
liance, and common-sense, and manly dealing with 
their own affairs and the Imperial affairs so largely 
intrusted to them, will, if they do not disappear, 
droop into a tendency to lean upon the State — the 
State which is after all here and everywhere the 
phantom self of every man in it. Is the individual 
less a man? Then just so surely is the State less to 
be respected. 

What did all these things matter to England fifty 
years ago, or even twenty-five years ago. She had 
been unbeaten on land, or at sea, for as long as a 
man's memory could go. She was so easily first in 
shipping and commerce that there was not only no 



THE LAND OF COMPROMISE in 

rival, but no second, the rest of the world was no- 
where. Why not be generous and conciliatory, why 
fash one's self about education, the quarrels among 
the sects, the demands of labor, the partition of the 
land, the drink question, when there was so much 
and to spare! Compromise, smihng compromise if 
possible, was easier, was more soothing to the nerves, 
and was found to be the cheapest oil for the ma- 
chinery of State. But when everybody compromises, 
from bishops to barmaids, somebody must be paid 
some time, — yes, there is always the Devil to pay! 
And now he is presenting his accounts all round. 
''Disestablishment" is handed to the bishops; ''no 
more barmaids" is handed to the barmaids; "re- 
duction of the forces, and of pay" is handed to the 
army; "unemployment" is handed to the work- 
man; and "increased taxes" distributed Hberally to 
everybody; and ministers of State themselves throw 
up their hands and complain of the difficulty of 
riding the two horses at once, "of economy and 
efficiency." If economy had been ridden with 
firmer hands and a more confident seat in the saddle, 
there would have been no need of such a simian 
straddle as that. Compromise loses any intellectual 
defensibility, and becomes a term of the circus, 
when it is thus used. Compromise which gives 
as much liberty as safety permits to two opposing 
factions, may have its political use; but compro- 
mise, powdered and painted, in tights and spangles, 
kissing its hands to the mob, is a contemptible 
thing. 

We have seen how in church, in Parliament, in 



112 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

expenditure and in governing, compromise has been 
the offered solution. In the days of prosperity it 
may serve the purpose well enough, but must there 
not be an end to its efficacy some time ? 

If we have learnt anything from this admirable 
people, and this wonderful Empire, it has been how 
much may be done by liberty loving men, with the 
wealth and leisure to insure courage, patience and 
loyalty. We have watched their history for a thou- 
sand years and more, in which men have accepted their 
responsibilities, and used their opportunities. We 
have seen how neither opportunity nor responsibility 
has been denied to any man. Any man may rise 
in church, in State, or society. So much has ample 
freedom done. Men made England, and kept her 
inviolate. But now what a change! At the hour 
of this writing practically every important legislative 
movement is in some sort a plea and a plan to soften 
men, to lessen their responsibilities, and to make 
them feel that they need not earn their opportunities. 
This may do in some Utopian kingdom of which I 
know nothing, but it is death to the Saxon. Com- 
promise was well enough as long as it made it easier 
to give freedom to a large number; but compromise 
is disaster, where it locks up high principle in a dark 
closet, and then goes fumbling and grovelling for 
votes. At a time when over 32,000,000 of the popu- 
lation of the United Kingdom are dwellers in cities 
and towns; this people, who, more than all others, 
have won their victories and achieved their develop- 
ment on the land and out of doors, it seems hardly 
the proper work of far-seeing statesmanship to 



THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 113 

weaken them still further by pandering to their own 
ignorant short-cuts to salvation. 

These reflections must not for a moment be taken 
as maHcious, or as seeking to give pain. We are 
not deahng with a pat of butter, or a bit of wood, or 
a handful of clay. There is good metal here, and 
when one draws his picture on copper, one must use 
steel and an acid. It would be no compliment to 
the English people to use the epicene style of ambas- 
sadorial compliment. A clawless kitten is not more 
harmless or more uninforming than a foreign am- 
bassador at a banquet. That is his busine^! But 
as between men, we all know that America does not 
like England, and that Americans do not Hke the 
EngHsh, but no inteUigent American, no American 
indeed whose opinion is worth a fig, would rejoice 
to see this nation, which has taught the nations of 
the world the greatest lesson since Christianity, and 
that is the lesson of law, and order, and Hberty, lose 
her grip. We, too, are of the Saxon breed, diluted 
though the blood may be, and we have our problems 
and our tasks, and both would be made the harder 
should English civilization prove a failure. Here,, 
not long ago, was the hardiest, the best trained, the 
most law-abiding, and the freest people in the world, 
and no American who loves his own country can 
look on and see them emasculated with equanimity 
or without trying to analyze the reasons for such a 
change of attitude. 

We have no faith in the philosophic socialism, 
touched up with self-conscious oratory, which gov- 
erns France; none in the bureaucracy, guided by 



114 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

Divine Right, which governs Germany; certainly 
none in the autocracy, perched upon dynamite, which 
governs Russia. We believe that a people can be 
taught self-government, though the weak point in all 
democracies is that there is nothing the people dis- 
trust so much as the people. In England that weak- 
ness has been partially eliminated by their method of 
choosing as a rule their leaders and their legislators 
from a class whose independence has been a safe- 
guard against corruption, or intimidation. Their 
governing has been a success, because it has been a 
friendly deference to a consensus of the competent 
created by themselves. No American wishes to see 
that solution of government, of all by the best, chosen 
in free and open competition, fail. 



IV 

ENGLISH HOME LIFE 

ON entering an Englishman's house the first 
thing one notices is how well his house is 
adapted to him. It seems to have grown 
up around him, as in so many cases it has, and to 
have taken on the folds of his character, as a coat 
often worn moulds itself to the figure of its owner. 
On entering an American's house, the first thing one 
notices is how well he adapts himself to his house. 
In England, the establishment is carried on with 
a prime view to the comfort of the man, and this ap- 
plies to rich and poor alike and to all conditions of 
society. In America the establishment is carried on 
with a prime view to the comfort and the exigencies 
of the woman. Men are more selfish than women, 
consequently the English home is, as a rule,^at any 
rate from a man's point of view, more comfortable 
than the American home; barring of course our 
innumerable mechanical contrivances for heating, 
bathing, ventilation, cooking and so on, of which 
even now, not only the average English house is 
quite barren, but also the houses of the wealthy, 
both in town and country. But here again it is the 
woman and the servants who keep house who suffer, 
not the man. 

115 



ii6 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

Men demand more, and receive more for their 
money than do women, hence it is likely to follow- 
that a man's house, while it will be less attractive 
sesthetically, will be more carefully furnished with 
an eye to creature comforts than that of a w^oman. 

An Englishman is more at home in his own house 
than an American, first because he is by all the in- 
mates recognized as the absolute master there, and 
because he spends more of his time there. He 
leaves it later in the morning, returns to it earHer in 
the day, and gives more of himself to it than does an 
American. An Englishman is continually going 
home, an American is continually going to business. 
Ages of social laws, and vast accretions of social dis- 
tinctions have made the EngHshman who can stay 
at home more important than the EngHshman who 
must go to business; consequently, all Englishmen 
assume that they are much at home, and little at 
business, whether they are or not, for by so doing 
they loom larger on the social horizon. 

The Englishman is forever planning and schem- 
ing to get home, and to stay at home, and to enjoy 
the privileges of his home; while the American is 
more apt to devote his energies to make his business 
a place to go to, and in which to spend himself. 
Here again the social lever plays its part, for in 
America a man is the more distinguished from his 
fellows the more business he has on his hands, and 
he, too, assumes a busy-ness sometimes out of pro- 
portion to the reality. 

These minor details of domestic life put their im- 
press upon larger matters of business and politics. 



ENGLISH HOME LIFE 117 

It would be worthy of remark should a party leader 
in Congress attack his opponents on the ground 
that a Saturday session prevented him and his fol- 
lowers from spending two days a week at home. 
But it is a matter of course in the English Parlia- 
ment that Mr. Balfour should object strenuously to 
a plan for a Saturday's sitting which debars Eng- 
lishmen from Saturday and Sunday at their own 
j&resides; or from the pursuit of their favorite out- 
door pleasures. Whether time shall be given mem- 
bers of Parliament to go out to dine at leisure, no 
matter what bill is before the house, assumes dimen- 
sions of grave poHtical importance. But a bitter 
attack in the American Congress on the topic of the 
dinner hour would scarcely be listened to, and would 
certainly relegate its champion to the realms of 
crankdom and ridicule. So, too, any uneasiness on 
the part of legislators lest they should not get away 
to the country for the grouse shooting, a common 
enough faihng in England, is so far beyond reason- 
able probabiHty in America that it is impossible to 
characterize what would happen to an agitator on 
such a subject. 

Americans staying any time in England, whether 
men or women, are impressed by the fact that it is 
the country of men. Likewise the English, both men 
and women, who visit America are impressed by the 
fact that America is the country of women. Possibly 
we might deduce from this that Americans make 
the better husbands, and the English the better 
wives. But this is much too subtle a subject, and 
one providing too many exceptions to discuss. One 



ii8 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

may perhaps say tentatively, without much fear of 
contradiction, that Enghshwomen take it for granted 
that their husbands' pleasure and comfort, and even 
amusements, should take first place; while the 
American man rather delegates the part of pleasure, 
comfort, and amusement to his wife, and she, per- 
haps, has come to look upon this often as her privi- 
lege, and sometimes, alas, as her right. Whatever 
the reason, the general average of home life is more 
comfortable in England than in America. Whether 
it be a matter of political economy, of free trade for 
example, or not, all the requirements for comlorta- 
ble living are indubitably cheaper in England than 
in America. 

People having incomes varying from $1,500 to 
$15 000 a year can and do live more comfortably m 
England than with us. In the view of the French- 
man, however, the EngHsh require more than the 
French. Taine writes that where a Frenchman eats 
a sheep and a half in a year an Englishman eats 
four sheep; and goes on to say: "Possess £20,000 
in the funds here or else cut your throat. Such is 
the idea which constantly haunts me, and the omni- 
bus advertisements suggest it still more in informing 
me that Mappin's celebrated razors cost only one 
shilling." This gives the other side of the picture, 
but to the American, the opportunity for comfort and 
economy on the same income is far greater here than 

at home. 

In the case of people with say less than $1,500 a 
year or more than $20,000 a year, they do not 
profit so materially by the difference in prices, for 



ENGLISH HOME LIFE 119 

the reason that luxury is everywhere expensive, and 
genteel poverty everywhere equally distressing; or 
even more distressing in this country where for so 
many months in the year the landscape looks like 
a charcoal drawing over which a damp sleeve has 
been drawn. 

Nothing gives more conclusive proof of the truth 
of these comparisons than to notice how the English 
and the Americans respectively go about it to econ- 
omize. In a large establishment in England the 
horses for the wife's brougham and victoria would go 
before the husband's hunters, while the reverse of this 
would be true in an American establishment com- 
pelled to make similar sacrifices. It is the husband, 
rather than the wife, who is looked to to advertise 
the family prosperity in England. It would be a 
very rare case indeed in America where the wife 
would not have more and greater variety of clothes 
than her husband, but this is much less true in Eng- 
land. Even poor m.en in England have more clothes 
than well-to-do men in America. An income of 
$5,000 a year in England would mean four times the 
amount of clothes that the possessor of the same in- 
come in America would think necessary. On the 
other hand, the percentage of any given income, 
from $3,000 to $20,000, expended by the wives and 
daughters for clothes, would be half to two-thirds 
less in England than with us. A man servant of 
some kind in the establishment is far more com- 
mon in England than with us, and he among other 
things takes care of the master of the house, who is 
thus more easily capable of dealing with a large 



120 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

wardrobe and has mort /eisure to employ as he 
prefers. 

Both for the reason that such service is much 
cheaper here, and also for the reason already given, 
that the man is the important person, the men are 
more cared for than the women, and a man servant 
is a common appanage of men in this country whose 
Incomes would be deemed, and would be, as a mat- 
ter of fact, quite inadequate for such an expense in 
America. 

The last things that an Englishman willingly parts 
with are the appurtenances and conveniences which 
permit him to have his friends around him at his 
own table, or at his club; and this applies up and 
down through all but the lowest class. With us, on 
the contrary, the great mass of my countrymen, out- 
side of a comparatively few dwellers in our large 
cities, would scarcely miss not having people to dine 
with them at their own table. An Englishman 
forced to economize would move out of a big house 
into a small one in order to keep certain conven- 
iences, such as servants, a certain standard of living 
and a certain personal dignity, which make for his 
personal comfort; while an American would try 
to the last to stick to his big house, but cut down 
the number of servants and other personal conven- 
iences by which he does not set so much store. 

If one were training a race-horse to win an impor- 
tant event, the last thing one would economize upon 
would be comfortable stabling and the quality of his 
grooms and his feed. One is continually reminded 
of "training," in seeing how the hard-worked Eng- 



ENGLISH HOME LIFE 121 

iishman, whether in poHtics, business, literature, the 
civil service or in a profession cares for himself, and 
is cared for in his own house. Everything bends to 
make him and to keep him "fit." 

Such men as the leading statesmen, diplomats, 
barristers, journalists, bankers, business men gen- 
erally, and prelates; in short, the dignified, respon- 
sible and great ones of the earth are, so to speak, 
regularly groomed, and kept in condition, physically 
and mentally, for their arduous duties. They take 
frequent holidays; everything that paid service can 
do, — and such service is astonishingly cheap here, — 
from keeping their clothes to attending to their cor- 
respondence and their engagements, they are re- 
lieved of. 

Gladstone was a fine horseman in his early days 
and a widely advertised performer with the axe 
later; Balfour plays the piano, plays golf and writes 
on philosophy — all pastimes in their way; Rose- 
bery is the most charming occasional speaker in 
England, and a racing man besides; Chamberlain 
is a grower of orchids. Grey is an authority on fish- 
ing, Salisbury was a chemist and in his early days a 
journalist, and countless others are sportsmen and 
writers upon sport and travel; while Sir Charles 
Dilke is the only man I have ever met who seriously 
impressed me with the idea that a man might be 
omniscient after all. They make a business of recre- 
ation, in order that in its turn business may be in 
some sort a recreation. A good wholesome doctrine. 

It is not venturesome to say that public opinion in 
America would not permit a member of the Cabinet 



122 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

to keep a racing stable, and it would not help him 
politically and would certainly serve as a text for 
much ridicule were it known that he were a crack 
golf or racquet player. Such a man with us, with 
complications of immense importance in Siam and 
in South Africa on his hands, would be considered 
to be either mad or a traitor should he hurry off 
for a day or two's journey to a race-course to see one 
of his horses run in one of the classic races. 

In England these engrossing avocations are 
deemed to be a wise economy of power; with us 
they are still looked upon by the great majority as a 
frivolous waste of energy. Such an innocent recre- 
ation as a translation of Virgil probably carried little 
weight in our national legislature, even though the 
perpetrator was as popular as our ex-Secretary of the 
Navy, Long, of Massachusetts, was and deserved to 
be. On the other hand, the fame of Gladstone's 
unscholarly Homeric heresies produced an undoubted 
effect both in and out of Parliament, upon both his 
followers and his opponents. They have been at 
it longer than we have, and hold with Plato that the 
man is not the body, but the fellow who has the 
body, and also that change is rest. 

We are not concerned for the moment with the 
comparative merits of these methods of life; they 
serve merely to illustrate the dominant theme. They 
all go to show that domestic economy in England is 
devised for, and directed to the aim of making the 
men as capable as possible of doing their work. 
The home is not a play-house for the women and 
their friends; nor a grown-up nursery for the mother 



ENGLISH HOME LIFE 123 

and the children, but a place of rest and comfort 
in which the men may renew their strength. It is 
possibly fair to deduce from this that house-keeping 
as a rule in England has a more definite aim and 
consequently more system, and less waste of energy, 
and money, than is the case in the majority of Ameri- 
can houses. 

However awkward and flamboyantly dressed the 
Englishwoman may appear upon the boulevards of 
Paris; however dull she may appear when ranged 
alongside of her American cousin in a drawing- 
room, in her own house she has few superiors — 
unless it be in France — as a domestic business 
manager. 

She gains this ability by previous years of train- 
ing. It is the exception, rather than the rule, where 
both the boys and girls in an English household do 
not receive an allowance. It is true that nothing 
permits of so many shades of meaning as the word 
"allowance" when thus used. It may mean any- 
thing, from a good-natured paternal promise to pay, 
which is irregularly fulfilled, to a light advance fund 
for gloves and bon-bons, to be followed each month, 
or each quarter, by the infantry and heavy artillery 
of dressmakers' and milhners' bills. Those who 
have suffered in adolescence from the one, and in 
maturity from the other, know what a multitude of 
interpretations lie between these extremes. The 
British interpretation is, however, serious and fixed. 
Girls and boys alike are held pretty strictly to ac- 
count and are obliged to live upon a certain fixed 
sum. Women coming into the management of es- 



124 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

tablishments of their own are already trained to the 
business aspect of the situation. They have also a 
tremendous advantage over their American cousins, 
as an aid to v^ise expenditure, in public opinion. 
Nobody, from the King down, is either ashamed or 
afraid to be economical. Here either a man or a 
woman is thought to be a fool or a vulgarian who is 
not careful of expenditure; while in America our 
Negro, Irish, and other foreign servants have been 
clever enough to make it appear that economy is 
mean, and as a nation we suffer accordingly. We 
are fools enough to be fooled by these underlings 
who, driven from their own countries, come pre- 
pared to exploit ours. 

Not so in England. Money is not so easily made^, 
nor has it such earning power in England as in 
America, and as a consequence it is much more care- 
fully cherished. And money buys more in England 
than in America. It is by no means true, as preva- 
lent opinion leads one to believe, that money plays 
a greater role in America than in England. The 
"almighty dollar'* receives no such obsequious 
homage in its native lair as does the "sovereign" 
in its own house of worship. Everybody takes tips 
in England, from the Prime Minister to whom an 
earldom is given, or the radical who is made a knight, 
down to the railway porter content with threepence. 
The typical American boy abroad, described by Mr. 
Henry James, whose frequently repeated war-cry is, 
"My dad's all-fired rich!" has many even more 
vulgar prototypes in England. The methods Eng- 
lish men and English women will stoop to, and the 



ENGLISH HOME LIFE 125 

humiliations they will suffer, in order to make or to 
get money, are not merely not practised in America, 
but are quite unknown there. For the very reason 
that money gives so much of comfort, and standing, 
and opportunity here, the struggle to get it is unpar- 
alleled anywhere else in the world. To have money 
here, no matter what the other advantae^es of birth 
or ability may be, is to add a thousand-fold to their 
value, while to be without it is a heart-breaking 
handicap. 

A great soldier, a great sailor, a great ruler over 
one of the English colonies is rewarded for his suc- 
cesses not only by a title, but by a large gift of money. 
Lord Roberts, Lord Kitchener, Lord Cromer are all 
cases in point. They were not only promoted in 
the social scale, but handsomely rewarded by gifts 
of money. 

There are few Americans of a certain standing 
who cannot tell extraordinary tales of the humili- 
ating proceedings of needy aristocrats from Eng- 
land; from the men who are out and out blacklegs 
to the women who exploit their American hosts for 
the purpose of gambling in the stock market. But 
this is not by any chance to be a chronicle of gossip. 
We have our social fringes as well as the English. 
It is intended, in recalling the misdeeds of some of 
our visitors, merely to illustrate the fearful tempta- 
tion people of a certain class are under in their en- 
deavor to keep up appearances, and to note to what 
extremes they will go to keep themselves even osten- 
sibly afloat. A Mississippi steamboat captain main- 
tained that his boat drew so little water that she 



126 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

would float wherever there had been a heavy dew! 
A needy Englishwoman will float her financial social 
craft or try to do so on even shallower water than 
that; and no spectacle is more inexpressibly pitia- 
ble. To have been somebody and to become no- 
body; to have had and not to have, are more ap- 
palling changes here than with us. The successful 
here are rewarded as in no other country in the 
world, and the strong train and fight for the prizes 
grimly; and the weak hang on to the shreds of 
prosperity in a painful and humiliating way. In a 
country therefore where money is so potent and so 
difficult to acquire, those who have the disbursing 
of it must be trained to, or acquire wisdom in, its use, 
even in the affairs of the household. 

The fact that the English house is so ostensibly, 
and first and foremost, conducted with the aim of 
making the men comfortable, makes it easy to under- 
stand and to give the reasons for the greater economy 
practised therein. Men suffer from a far more 
severe strain of competition in England than with us, 
and economy always, whether it be economy of 
method, of time, or of money, is just so much saved 
from the imperative, for the voluntary. There is no 
possibility of great exertion without frequent periods 
of rest. This is taken into account here. In Eng- 
land men have more avocations, more amusements, 
more interests outside of the daily round of pressing 
business than with us. These avocations demand 
leisure, and economy is the mother of leisure. The 
percentage of men — although much less than it was 
twenty-five years ago — who aside from their en- 



ENGLISH HOME LIFE 127 

grossing pursuits of business or profession, devote 
themselves to some hobby, if one may call it so, is 
overwhelmingly greater than with us. And one may 
say unreserv^edly that this is a good thing. " You'll 
get no good from all your runnin' and sparrin', sir, 
w^ithout plenty of rest!" was the oft-repeated in- 
junction of an old trainer of athletes. The hour's 
complete rest after the eight-mile spin was what 
made the muscle. 

The employment of man's leisure hours has most 
to do with making or marring him. "Le temps le 
mieux employe est celui qu'on perds!" The num- 
ber of men who raise horses, or dogs, or pigs, or 
sheep, or cows; who are players at cricket, golf, 
tennis, or rowing; who collect books, prints, or 
autographs, Japanese curios or odd bits of porce- 
lain; who are studying an ancient or a modem lan- 
guage; who make a business of doing a bit of travel- 
ling every year; who climb mountains, or explore 
new countries; who go in for hunting, shooting, 
fishing, botany, or geology; who study some branch 
of archeology, or dig for the roots of a genealogical 
tree, is astonishingly large. Indeed the man of even 
moderate means who is without some such, more or 
less important, recreation is, one may almost say, 
the exception. Of course I am speaking now of men 
of serious pursuits. The idle club lounger is no 
more a stranger here than with us, and even less 
worth classifying. To know something about many 
things, and everything about something, is a good 
educational ideal, besides giving breadth, variety, 
and a saline interest to life. An Englishman's holi- 



128 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

day is looked forward to, planned for, and provided 
for with some care; while all too often in America 
a holiday to a busy man over thirty-five is a white 
elephant, which he ends by turning over to his wife 
and daughters as a mount. 

One is in no danger of exaggerating here, at least, 
for the intense competition of English life to-day, 
which makes it necessary that men should " train '* 
in order to achieve success, or even so much as hold 
their own, is everywhere manifest. 

In so far as these Englishmen take better care of 
themselves, they are younger for their years than 
our men. I am controverting the received opinion 
about the English, both on the Continent and in 
America, when I say that Englishmen laugh and 
smile and "lark" more than other men of mature 
age. I have noted how men of different ages play 
together; so, too, they get on comfortably and hap- 
pily together in all sorts of ways. This may be due 
to the fact that priggishness is so abhorred here, and, 
consequently, serious matters are not much dis- 
cussed, intellectual differences between men of dif- 
ferent ages are not so marked, and men in their 
conversation as well as in their games are more on 
the same level. Any assumption of superiority is 
frowned upon, and both young and old make a mild 
form of "chaff" the conversational medium of in- 
tercourse. At the club, in the country house billiard- 
room, over their cigars and coffee after dinner, the 
conversation seldom drifts beyond the understand- 
ing, or the easy participation therein of those most 
mildly endowed intellectually. 



ENGLISH HOME LIFE 129 

The young and the old are much more together 
than with us. At a dinner in town, at a house party 
in the country, there is no dividing people by their 
ages. Fathers and sons, uncles and nephews, are 
much more at home with one another than with us, 
and see much more of one another, and have ap- 
parently more in common. In the Row of a morn- 
ing, at the cricket-games, at the shooting and fishing 
and racing, at the billiard-table after dinner, the 
youngsters between twenty and thirty not only mingle 
with, but are the boon companions of, their elders. 
It is generally noted how much more a man of the 
world the EngHsh boy is than the American boy. 
He probably does not know as much, he certainly is 
not so sharp and quick, but he is far more of a man, 
speaking of course very generally and leaving room 
for exceptions. This is due to the fact that the 
English boy spends so much of his time with his 
elders. A common ground of meeting and conversa- 
tion is of course sport, and in that realm prowess 
and experience, and not age, mark the differences 
between men. Here a man is merely as old as his 
handicap at the games he plays; and the number, 
of "scratch" men over forty is greater than in any. 
other country in the world. 

They love sport, it is true, for its own sake; but 
they realize that youthfulness is a valuable asset in 
affairs, in politics, in social life, and so make a busi- 
ness of keeping young. 

The Englishman at home on his own little isl- 
and and amongst his own friends is, contrary to 
the opinion almost universally held abroad, a very 



130 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

cheerful and boyish person. He has nothing of the 
feHne flavor that almost always pertains to the in- 
door man. The cleverest amongst them conceal 
their cleverness, and the race as a whole are rigid 
abstainers from all forms of intellectual meat and 
drink as such. The rule of thumb and common- 
sense methods are good enough for them, and thus 
far their national preeminence has not forced them 
to question their value. 

Nature comes down hard on those who go too far 
in the development of the brain. We are more 
cheerful, younger, better tempered, and saner, most 
of us, the more we live out of doors, eat and drink 
without thinking of it, and give the brain no more 
than its fair share of work to do. This is the atti- 
tude of the Englishman toward Hfe. One can breed 
to physical, but not very successfully to mental, type, 
and the English by intuition have neglected any 
attempt to do so. The boulevards of Paris swarm 
with mediocre intellectual celebrities, all too many 
of them of a most unwholesome odor; even we 
Americans are still more or less obsessed, at any rate 
in politics, by the haranguer, the mountebank, and 
the wire-puller. The Englishman will have none 
of them. He refuses to consent to the burial of 
Herbert Spencer in Westminster Abbey; he pro- 
claims in the House of Lords by the mouth of a 
cricketing peer that: *' Lord's Cricket Ground is 
one of tlie most sacred spots in England," a state- 
ment received with loud cheers by that assembly 
when it was proposed to cut into the grounds for a 
tram line, and he goes his way through the world 



ENGLISH HOME LIFE 131 

quite convinced that he is right in his estimate of the 
comparative value of mind and matter. Even their 
formally intellectual professions are filled with men, 
in the church, in the law, in medicine, and the like, 
who openly exalt the material rather than the in- 
tellectual and spiritual side. 

That fine fellow, the Church of England parson, 
is one of the most useful persons in England, but 
it is because he is generally an outdoor rather than 
an indoor man. A small boy here was asked what 
he would like to be were he grown up. He hesitated 
a moment and then said: "I think it would be 
rather jolly to be a sporting parson!" 

It is this attitude toward life that makes the 
Frenchman and the American cry, "dull,'* when the 
Enghshman is mentioned. I should phrase it dif- 
ferently. He is very young, and he is sane and sel- 
dom mentally finical, but he is a very sophisticated 
man of the world in the best sense of the phrase for 
all that. It is not dull to succeed, and as the world 
stands to-day he is still first in the race. 

I emphasize this trait of youthfulness, and this 
habit of theirs of the young and the old living more 
together and having more in common than do we, 
because this is distinctly the Englishman as he is at 
home, and distinctly not what he is held to be abroad. 
With us, "young people" are often enough spoken 
of, and treated by their elders, as though they were 
a class by themselves, bounded by eighteen on the 
south and by, say, twenty-five on the north. This is 
the absurd fiction of a shallow and a provincial civ- 
ilization. It makes boys and girls silly, and it ofteE 



132 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

makes their elders shy and pompous. Neither old 
nor young profit by such exclusions. Every man 
does his work better, and every woman lives her Hfe 
more serenely, the more of youthfulness and vigor 
and optimism there is in the atmosphere. There is 
not only the good fellowship, not only the experience 
of age and the daring of youth, but a saner tone all 
round. A man is not dead at forty, nor infallible at 
twenty, and it is well that Forty and Twenty should 
rub up against one another and make the discov- 
ery frequently. It is good for both. The impor- 
tance of this is well understood here, where only 
the "fittest" and the "most fit" survive. 

There are more than 1,200 ordained clergy of the 
Anglican Church without parishes, not to mention 
some sixty-five who were actually, at last accounts, 
in the workhouse; 85 per cent of the barristers have 
nothing to do; 80 per cent do not make $1,200 a 
year. The agricultural depression of late has been 
such that incomes from land have been sadly reduced 
all round. The great increase in the last twenty-five 
years of facilities for gaining something of an edu- 
cation at small cost has flooded the market with 
both men and women who are ready to sell, or rent, 
their small intellectual equipments at almost starva- 
tion prices. Even when one goes further up the 
ladder there are many more men in England than 
in America who feel this pressure of competition, 
and who prepare themselves, and look after their 
reputation and their health, with scrupulous care 
lest they be shoved to one side. 

A certain moral stability in matters of business 



ENGLISH HOME LIFE 133 

and finance is partly due to this. A man cannot 
afford to fail, cannot afford to make a mistake here, 
for there is little chance of his ever getting back if 
he does. The swarms of Englishmen in South 
Africa, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, 
Canada, South America, and the northwestern parts 
of our own country attest the fact that only the best 
equipped and the very strongest can hold their own 
in the tight little island itself. 

At this moment a gentleman with a fair income 
has his oldest boy, of nineteen, at work with the 
village blacksmith; and the next, a boy of seven- 
teen, in a neighboring carpenter's shop; and some 
months later they will leave home to try farming 
in Manitoba. These are not isolated examples. 
They happen to come under immediate observa- 
tion. There are hundreds of gentlemen's sons who 
are obliged to leave England to find occupation and 
a living. They cannot be supported, or support 
themselves, at home. The strictness with which 
these matters are arranged and carried out here is 
unknown in America and would be deemed cold- 
blooded indeed by the American parent. The 
younger children of wealthy parents soon learn that 
they must fend for themselves. To be second, 
third and fourth sons of a great house is often enough 
to live upon a pittance, and there is no redress either 
at law or by appeaHng to sentiment. It is the law 
of the land, and anyone at all acquainted with Eng- 
land's social life is soon aware of the hardships of the 
noble and gentle scions who happen to be born too 
late. It is this arrangement, of course, which ex- 



134 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

plains two things which are at first puzzling: First, 
that so many Englishmen must seek in other lands 
for position and a living, and, second, that there is 
so little virulent class feeling in this nation of class 
distinctions. A duke's grandson is only a com- 
moner; an earl's second son's children may be, to 
all intents and purposes, poverty stricken — not in- 
frequently they are. But they are of the same blood 
and very nearly related to the great ones of the 
country, and, therefore, in spite of the disparity in 
worldly goods, they still remain, out of pride, sup- 
porters of the classes rather than the masses. 

Since the days when political places, commissions 
in the army, and fat livings in the church were in the 
gift of a feudal aristocracy, the straits to which the 
younger sons and daughters are put are illustrated 
by the countless amateur wine merchants, shop- 
keepers, servants' agencies, millinery shops, tobac- 
conists, brokers, jobbers, agents for estates, and the 
like, in the hands of gentlemen and ladies, trying 
to make a living. One man born two years before 
another comes in for title, wealth, position, and op- 
portunity; the second son comes in for a beggarly 
income grudgingly given, while the grandchildren of 
the eldest son and the grandchildren of the second 
son may be poles apart in wealth and status. But 
it is exactly the same blood, and if blood tells, then 
these descendants of the nobility, but without title, 
ought to make themselves felt for the general good 
of the nation. And they do. This is economy in- 
deed. Economy even of blood and family. The 
eldest gets practically all, the younger sons a pit- 



ENGLISH HOME LIFE 135 

tance. The softly sheltered American girl, of a 
family only moderately well-off, would be amazed, 
if she could be induced to beHeve the truth, at the 
small incomes of many a nobleman's sisters and 
daughters. This, too, is economy in a still larger 
sense. It is the economy of concentrating even the 
money power in a few hands. The vast amount of 
capital in the hands of comparatively few people has 
been one of the great factors in enabling England in 
the last hundred years to become the landlord of the 
great industries of the world. That time is fast pass- 
ing away, but England's unprecedented prosperity 
from 181 5 to 1875 was to some extent due to that: 
She was the only country in the world with large 
supplies of liquid capital ready for investment in 
those days, and she has profited enormously from 
the situation. Her dividends pour in from every 
corner of the earth to-day as a consequence of this. 
The concentration of her wealth and the dispersal 
of her younger sons have been features of her econ- 
omy of management and prime factors in her em- 
pire making. It is harsh domestic doctrine, this, of 
all to the eldest and little or nothing at all to the 
younger ones, but when one looks about and sees 
the seedy, out-at-elbows noblesse of France, Italy, 
Germany, and Russia, without leadership, without 
wealth, without power, and often merely the anaemic 
transmitters of foolish faces, the system appears to 
have something to be said in its favor. England is 
a commercial country and her aristocracy is still held, 
or holds itself, at the highest price. A fooHsh Amer- 
ican mother, and the ambitious American girl find 



136 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

that titles on the Continent may be bought by the 
dozen, while in England they still command a fair 
though declining price for each one. 

One does not wonder then, at the domestic econ- 
omy, or, on the other hand, at the applause, the ob- 
sequiousness, almost the servility, which greet suc- 
cess in England. The prizes are fewer, they are 
far more difficult to win, and they are splendidly re- 
warded. A really great man in England is rewarded 
as in no other land, while the failures suffer in pro- 
portion. 

Of all nations in the world, with perhaps the ex- 
ception of our own, England has had the reputa- 
tion, at least, of demanding that success should be 
accompanied by virtue. At any rate since the days 
of those torpid Teutons, the Georges, this has been 
the case. But the strife has become so keen that 
even this imperative consideration is sometimes lost 
sight of. So long as a statesman keeps within legal 
bounds, he is judged rather by the power he wields 
than by his reputation at the club, or in his house. 
It may be said of course that genius always, every- 
where, has been permitted a certain Hcense, but that 
is not the point at issue here. The EngHsh people 
v/ould never consent to be ruled by a genius, or to 
permit genius to be in power amongst them. Any- 
thing that is not ostentatiously, and plainly to the 
naked eye, commonplace, they distrust to a man. 
There is an easily recognized difference between 
power and genius; the one representing the result of 
organization, the other the result of temperament; 
and even to the former there is to-day accorded a 



ENGLISH HOME LIFE 137 

liberty in the realm of morals, which the great mass 
of the English people permit, because they are 
forced to do so by exigencies of this keen competitive 
strife. They are driven to employ their able men 
both at home and abroad without too much scrutiny 
of their private morals. They have been, and are, 
great soldiers, sailors, statesmen and pro-consuls in 
England whose private lives would not endure ex- 
amination. I forbear illustrating this point. Only 
an Enghshman would criticise the statement, and, 
if he be well-informed, there are too many examples 
to make it worth debating. 

It may be said, without fear of successful con- 
tradiction, that if the private life of every public 
man in England were submitted to the same scrutiny 
that follows his public performances, there would be 
more reversals of judgment than would result from 
the same kind of criticism applied to pubHc men in 
America. A country which is preeminently a man's 
country must necessarily suffer from a man's code of 
morals. Divorce is bad, to be sure, but no one 
who knows England and the Continent and the ar- 
rangements — often enough open — which take the 
place of the American divorce-court, would for a 
moment wish to exchange the latter for the former. 
No man could hold a position of supreme public 
trust in America whose private life has been of the 
character of male sovereigns of England for an hun- 
dred years. And be it remembered that they give 
the lead to their subjects. 

It is the fashion in America — and it may be 
doubted whether it is a good one — to sneer at 



138 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

politicians and politics, and to start movements, and 
to form societies every now and again for the propa- 
gation of the gospel among them. Just as profes- 
sional philanthropy is so often merely benevolence 
seeking an audience, so the professional reformer is 
often failure posing as a critic. It is all too often the 
case after each of these ethical rebellions that the so- 
called, and self-styled, good men, reveal weaknesses 
which interfere sadly with the millennium that they 
propose to introduce. There is such a thing as 
being so occupied with the shielding of one's own 
virtues that one has no courage for a more robust 
form of usefulness. 

The English are rarely deceived in this way. A 
strong and efficient man is kept in his place so long 
as he abides by a man's code of morals. It may be 
expected, but it is not required, that the woman's 
code should be applied to him. It is fair to say of 
this particular question that public men, at any rate 
successful public men in England, share in the 
honors, the emoluments, the privileges, and in the 
pardon, granted to every kind of success here. High 
rank, great power, great wealth, are it is true bound 
by the supreme law of noblesse oblige. They must 
give their blood, their wealth, and their power on 
every occasion when their country needs them; and 
one is only doing England bare justice in saying that 
right royally they have always done so; but beyond 
that, into other ethical realms the discussion had 
best not go. No man who seeks only to tell the 
truth and to be understood would willingly irritate 
bis audience into an attitude of defiance. 



ENGLISH HOME LIFE 139 

The mention of these apparently disconnected 
points is necessary, because in reality they are the 
matters which most deeply concern and do much to 
make English home life what it is. In a country 
where the competition is excessive; where money 
has unwonted power to purchase comfort, dis- 
tinguished consideration and even charitable judg- 
ment; where success is greeted and rewarded with an 
enthusiasm and generosity almost unknown else- 
where, and where failure and mediocrity are forced 
to play very small roles indeed, the men are worth 
training to win the prizes. Only a man of gigantic 
abilities can be uncomfortable and miserable at 
home and at the same time successful in the world* 
This is understood here. Whether it is the English 
woman who appreciates it, or the English man who 
forces this view upon the woman, let some one else 
say, and let me keep my opinion to myself and be 
silent. At any rate the English woman knows that 
she can prevail only through the honors and distinc- 
tions of the man. Uhi Clodius^ ihi Claudia. The 
proportion of English women who are satisfied — or 
appear to be, whether they are or not, who knows ? 
— to make men comfortable, is very large. 

No man knows just how much tiresome routine 
and minute supervision go to make that sum total 
of comfort in his home of which we are writing. 
But every man knows that economy and system are 
the elementary principles which must underlie any 
such happy consummation. 

The economies practised in very many English 
households, both great and small, would almost be 



140 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

called — and wrongly — meannesses, with us. To 
begin with, houses are less extravagant' , though 
quite as conveniently furnished in those regions not 
entered by the public or one's friends. The furnish- 
ings of the living-rooms and sleeping-rooms are cur- 
tailed, not, however, to the point of discomfort, in 
order that the general average of comfort throughout 
the house shall be higher. The servants' quarters, 
whether in big houses or small ones, in town or 
country, in inns or private houses, are incomparably 
less convenient, and less comfortable, than with us. 
The linen-room, store-room and wine-cellar depart- 
ments are guarded by lock and key, and managed 
with a scrupulous nicety of calculation. Soap, can- 
dles, tea, sugar, coffee, trifles for the stable and 
kitchen, in short all the minor details of house-keep- 
ing, are looked after as carefully as are the minor 
expenditures in a great business house. The fact 
that a saving in candle ends, persisted in for a year, 
amounts to something is taken into account. Just 
as I have heard a young officer say that he found he 
could keep another hunter by giving up smoking 
and drinking, and had promptly done so. This 
economy which pervades the management of the 
household machinery, influences the servants as well. 
The cost of the butter provided each week by a 
cook, whose name for reasons of charity we forbear 
to give, in a city house in America, equalled almost 
exactly what was paid in an estabHshment on a 
similar scale in England for all the vegetables and 
fruit for the same length of time. It is, however, to 
be noted that a cook of Irish extraction in an Ameri- 



ENGLISH HOME LIFE 141 

can establishment occupies an autocratic position 
which has no parallel in England. As compared 
with America, servants are plenty and good. This 
is a subject in which the personal equation plays so 
predominant a part that it is not open to debate. 
There are good and bad servants, and good and bad 
masters, everywhere; only it is worth noting how 
very often the good masters and mistresses and the 
good servants, and vice versa, happen to come to- 
gether. 

In this matter of servants, competition is the domi- 
nant influence. Men and women servants are a rec- 
ognized and self-respecting class in England. The 
King gives the medal of some inferior order to the 
butler of a house he visits, or has done so on one 
occasion at least. This marks his notion that ser- 
vants are a recognized order, of a certain grade, in 
the State. Domestic service and politics are not 
considered here the sole employments requiring no 
preliminary and no special training. They enter 
the service and devote themselves to it and work to 
rise in it, not to escape from it. Much is expected 
from them, and, comparatively speaking, much is 
received from them. Servants' wages, even includ- 
ing beer money and other perquisites, are much 
lower than in America, though it is claimed that 
English servants specialize and consequently one 
needs more of them. A cook in England receives 
from $125 a year in the country to $200 a year in 
London — more of course, much more, in large es- 
tablishments. Housemaids receive from $80 in the 
country to $120 or more in London. Of men ser- 



142 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

vants it is not so easy to speak in figures. A good 
all-around man servant, where only one is kept, may 
not cost more than $200 a year in the country, while 
in London wages vary. One distinguished noble- 
man with a house in Park Lane, and a large es- 
tablishment in the country, remarked that he knew 
he paid his head man, a butler, too much, but that he 
liked him, and therefore kept him on at $450 a year. 
Men servants are sometimes paid fancy prices where 
they are endowed with six feet of height, beautiful 
calves, and good complexions. Tall parlor-maids 
fetch more than short ones, and not long ago we saw 
an advertisement in the London Daily Telegraph 
for a man servant who was expected to look after a 
pony and make himself useful in the house, and also 
to sing in the choir of the parish church; the wages 
offered for such a domestic Admirable Crichton be- 
ing $120 a year. An advertisement for a governess 
for two little girls, the wages offered being $125 a 
year, brought 162 replies in two days. It may be 
seen at a glance without going into more facts and 
figures in relation to a wearisome topic that in 
England servants are cheaper, better trained, more 
numerous, and better satisfied with their positions 
as servants, than in America. This state of things 
below-stairs lessens materially the difficulties of 
house-keeping economically, although as a final 
word one may say that there are some men and some 
women who would have good and faithful servantfci 
in Seringapatam, and others who could not keep a 
cook in Paradise. We have no desire to enter the 
arena of flying adjectives and bitter adverbs of the 



ENGLISH HOME LIFE 143 

Servant Question. As in religion and politics it is, 
far oftener than is admitted, a matter of tempera- 
ment rather than anything else. This explanation 
is not generally welcomed, because few people are 
willing to damn their failures and themselves by 
accepting a simple explanation of what they deem 
to be a complicated problem. It concerns us here 
merely to state that servants' wages in England are, 
roughly speaking, fifty per cent less than in America. 

The reasons why economy is more general in Eng- 
lish than in American households are scarcely more 
important than the results of such economy. The 
best and all-sufficient result is that economy gives 
leisure. System and regularity and lack of worry 
give men more time to sleep, more time to eat, more 
time to play, and more time and a better prepara- 
tion for work. In America our first distinguished 
men were from the South, where men had most 
leisure; and after that from prosperous New Eng- 
land. And, say what one may — and there is much 
to be said — in praise of the hard taskmaster, pov- 
erty, it must be granted that the larger part of the 
distinguished work of the world has been done, and 
is done, by men who have had, or who have made 
for themselves, leisure. The man who voluntarily 
permits, or who is forced by circumstances to per- 
mit, things to get into the saddle and ride, necessarily 
lacks the confidence and the mastery which marks 
off the men who ride from the men who are ridden. 

Mr. Buckle, after his manner, might deduce from 
these facts that the saving of candle ends in English 
households results in the colonizing of the globe by 



144 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

Englishmen. One need hardly go to such lengths 
as this, and yet it were unfair to English women, 
whose reputation for formless taste in dress and for 
hobbledehoy shyness of manner is already a suffi- 
cient handicap, not to say that the efficient ordering 
of their households has much to do with the working 
power of their men at home, and the influence and 
valor of their men abroad. It may be said, too, in 
this connection, that English women do not make 
such demands upon the time, and the engagements, 
of their men folk as do women in America. Eng- 
lishmen have far more occupations, and many more , 
pastimes and uses for their leisure, apart from their 
wives and sisters, than do American men. This is 
not meant as suggesting a less happy, or a less high 
standard of home life, for that would not be true. 
It means merely that English men spend more of 
their time with men, either for business or pleasure, 
or the occupation of their leisure in other ways, than 
do Americans. The American woman expects more, 
demands more, receives more attention, from the 
American man, than does the English woman from 
the English man. It begins in the nursery, and 
continues through the school age; the male animal 
is the favored one. More is done for him, more is 
expended upon him, and the household focuses its 
energies upon his development rather than upon that 
of the female. The result is the assumption of rights 
and privileges by the male, as over against the female, 
from childhood to, and through, maturity. This is 
a delicate thing to define, but all the more valuable 
as a contribution to the study of the English, be- 



ENGLISH HOME LIFE 145 

cause it is subtle and not easy of definition. There 
is an atmosphere in every household which predis- 
poses the girls to look up to the boys, and most Eng- 
lish women never recover from it, even where the 
one to whom they are expected to do reverence is 
openly unworthy of it. 

As over against the French methods of bringing 
up their boys, as though they were girls, the results 
are in themselves sufficient comment upon which is 
the better system. An American may approve of 
the results in the bearing of the men themselves, but 
he is none the less tempted to wonder sometimes if 
the English woman is not here and there deprived of 
a Httle of all she has a right to inherit. But, to put 
it bluntly, this is no affair of ours. The American 
girls are marrying English men, and the English 
women are not marrying American men; and there- 
fore comments upon the situation may be looked 
upon as acts of supererogation. To state the case 
at all demands the explanation that this is one of the 
prime factors in the development of the English man 
and in making him what we find him. 

England is not only a man's country, but the Eng- 
lish man is preeminently a man's man. The prizes 
here go to the soldiers, the sailors, the statesmen, the 
colonizers, the winners of new territory and the rul- 
ers over them, the travellers and explorers, the great 
churchmen and successful school-masters, to those, 
in short, with masculine brains and bodies. The 
feminine, the effeminate, and the Semitic prowess, 
is rewarded it is true — more of late years than ever 
before, be it said — but it is not the ideal of the na- 



146 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

tion. It has been wittily said that a statesman is a 
dead politician; but in England this does not apply. 
The great statesmen, or the leading politicians, as 
one may please to call them, receive their rewards 
early and often. As a consequence, England has 
had for hundreds of years an honor-roll of mighty 
men at the helm of her affairs. 

England has never had a social upheaval which 
has driven out her old families, and in consequence 
the public service commands an ability, and on the 
whole is conducted with an integrity, due to the fine 
feeling of a class long trained in genuine patriotism 
such as no other country can boast of. 

Spain drove out the Moors and the Jews. France 
expelled the Huguenots, and later indulged in orgies 
of indiscriminate murder of her aristocracy. Italy 
has emasculated her great families, leaving England 
alone the possessor of gentlemen of race and char- 
acter with pedigrees of responsibility. 

We have dared to note here and there through- 
out this volume certain signs of decadence in the 
England of to-day. Not the least ominous of these 
is that those who are leaving England are Saxons and 
Celts, while those who are coming in are Teutons 
and Jews. 

The old sturdiness and independence of charac- 
ter seem, at least to the outsider, to be deteriorating 
somewhat rapidly. Under the flimsy academic dis- 
guise of socialism, sops of sentiment are more com- 
mon than they were. Trade-unions, workhouses, 
free schooling, old-age pensions, shorter hours of 
work, endless public and private charities, have in- 



ENGLISH HOME LIFE 147 

advertently set up a standard of sloth which must 
prove disastrous to the former and better traditions 
of the race. It is not the first time in the history of 
the races of the world that the forerunners of decay 
have been distaste for steady work, craving for ex- 
citement, mania for gambling and loose-minded 
willingness to look to the State for the solution of 
personal problems by general and generous legisla- 
tion. Public men confronted by the cry for bread 
and games are tempted to sell their political souls 
for place and preferment. 

A man with ability, ambition, money, rank, 
knows that the best the world has to give in the way 
of power is his if he succeed here in politics, as does 
the man without rank or wealth, and one and all are 
tempted to go into politics, rather than tempted to 
keep away altogether. 

At the bottom of this is the feeling, scarcely real- 
ized by the English themselves fully, that the individ- 
ual who can do and does most for England, is the 
one to whom the great prizes belong, and to him 
rank and wealth are given without stint. England 
is a small island, scarcely bigger than the State of 
New York alone, and her very geographical position 
is an overwhelming demand for men, men, men! 
Without them she is starved, shorn, humiliated, lost. 
This is true of every country to be sure, but it is the 
essential truth about this great Empire with its heart 
in a small island. 

When we emphasize, therefore, certain peculiar 
features of their home life here, it is seen now at a 
glance not only that certain facts are true, but that 



148 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

they must be true. There would be no England 
without them. 

That Englishmen are such hardy explorers, such 
persistent settlers of the waste places of the earth, 
attests their love of home. They go, not because 
they wish to go, but because they hope to return with 
enough to establish a home in England. 

Neither EngHsh men nor English women like 
the unattached and nomadic existence of the hotel 
and the boarding house. The proportion of Ameri- 
cans who could have a modest home, but who prefer 
the flat and stale unprofitableness of hotels and board- 
ing houses, is, as compared with English people of 
the same income, vastly greater. And perhaps no 
one cause of the stricter economy of EngHsh house- 
holds is more potent than this. To have a house and 
a bit of garden of one's own, an English man or 
woman will submit to the utmost economy of ex- 
penditure, and the most rigorously accurate system 
of accounts. It may be a social prejudice or an in- 
grained habit of the British stamp of mind, but what- 
ever it is, there can be no doubt, that the English- 
man's ideal of life is to be a free man and master of 
the castle of his own house. 

To a greater extent than is commonly appreciated 
this domestic economy throws light upon the larger 
questions of British politics, whether domestic or 
foreign; and, conversely, British politics both at 
home and abroad are focused upon the maintenance 
in freedom and comfort of thousands of British 
householders. Home Rule for Ireland, the Educa- 
tion Bill, the Abolition of the House of Lords, the 



ENGLISH HOME LIFE 149 

Employers' Liability Bill, the Licensing Bill, which 
are now the gist of political discussion, are, one dis- 
covers on closer inspection, argued for and against on 
no theoretical grounds, but ever with an eye to their 
probable or possible bearing upon British domestic 
economy. The severest stricture that can be passed 
upon a man's political course by his opponents is 
that he neglects Imperial interests in his desire for a 
mere party majority. The translation of that is, that 
it is considered the most fatal thing to be said against 
even the greatest statesman, that he subordinates the 
safety of British commerce and consequently the 
security of British possessions and incomes, and thus 
necessarily the peace and comfort of English homes, 
to his own ambition. 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 

THIS title for a chapter might be considered 
unnecessarily impertinent, not to say insult- 
ing, were it not that it must be promptly an- 
swered in the negative. Why then put the question 
at all? For the very sufficient reason that it is a 
common misapprehension in America, in France, and 
elsewhere, and because in explaining this misappre- 
hension we shall light upon interesting characteristics 
of Mr. John Bull and his family. 

The slowness and steadiness of the race tempt the 
superficial critic to call them dull. But the people 
who have produced Chaucer, Shakespeare, Swift, 
Sterne, Sydney Smith, Charles Lamb, and Robert 
Louis Stevenson, may well laugh at any accusation 
of their lack of intellectual humor; while the people 
who have gobbled the wealth and commerce of the 
world for a century may look on with some amuse- 
ment while other nations call them dull. 

On Sunday, June twenty-fourth, 1906, there ap- 
peared in a reputable London newspaper a com- 
munication to the effect that if America were in 
earnest in her expressions of friendliness toward 
Great Britain she should at once take steps to re- 
deem the Confederate bonds! There is no lack of 

150 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 151 

grim humor here, and this is a typical illustration of 
the lack of dulness of this race who never for a mo- 
ment lose sight of the main chance. The insolent im- 
pertinence of this suggestion at this stage of the game, 
when the English powers that be are well aware that 
our friendship is a valuable international asset, and 
when an alliance between, say, Germany, America, 
Japan, and France would spell ruin to the British 
Empire, is proof enough that whatever the circum- 
stances, no sentimental haziness veils the keen, 
commercial, selfish vision of the English. The 
Pecksniffian ethics which raises hands in horror at 
our insurance scandals, our trust methods, at the 
disclosures of immorality in Germany, on the part 
of a nation which sells its Indian opium in China 
under the protection of British guns, and keeps 
twenty-five thousand Chinamen in the mines of 
South Africa, points to a very highly developed sense 
of humor. 

Be it said therefore in this connection that this 
question of dulness though it is not an enlivening 
quality in society, is nature's resource for preserv- 
ing steadiness of conduct and consistency of opinion. 
It enforces concentration, which is the necessary and 
fundamental mental quality preceding all others, 
no matter how lofty or how rare they be, and a people 
who learn slowly do not learn much, and then only 
what they must. The Enghshman might say, with 
not a little in his favor, that the best security for a 
people's doing their duty, is that they should not be 
distracted from doing it by knowing much else. 

Perhaps what the American calls dulness, the 



152 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

Englishman calls steadiness. Indeed "steady" is 
a much-used word among the Enghsh. "Steady, 
men!" you hear on every parade-ground, and no 
doubt hundreds of times in every battle where Eng- 
lishmen are fighting, and they are fighting some- 
where, in big or little fashion, much of the time. 

"Quand Italic sera sans poison, 
Et France sans trahison, 
Et I'Angleterre sans guerre; 
Lors sera le monde sans terre." 

"Steady lad!" "Steady girl!" you hear from 
every horseman, whether he be riding or driving. 
The English genius is not for analysis, but for action. 
He seeks to act, to do, to accompHsh, and the first 
necessity is to get people, or things, or horses, or 
ships, or balloons, or motors, steady. They cannot 
start, they cannot be controlled without steadiness. 
They demand this quality above all others in their 
statesmen, their soldiers, as well as in their horses. 
There is no talk of glory as in France; no constant ^ 
vision of self-advertisement, and of self-advancement 
by means of the reporter's pen and camera. Eng- 
land expects every man to do his duty, that's all. 
The glory and the advertisement may take care of 
themselves. In the naval fight between an English 
and an American ship, during the war of 1812, the 
American vessel appeared, flags flying. A young 
officer of the English ship asked his captain (Captain 
Broke, of the "Shannon") if they, too, might not 
put up more bunting. "No," was the reply, "this 
has always been an unassuming ship 1 " Such people 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 153 

keep the chief end in plain view, and are therefore 
not dazzled, not turned aside and tempted by side 
issues. Diversity of interest and desultoriness — ■ 
this last word in its nice etymological sense — are 
not characteristics of the English. We sometimes 
think them dull for this reason. 

Some of their great men would probably appear 
dull at our after-dinner festivities, alongside of certain 
American publicists we might mention, who have 
been renowned principally as '^orators" and story- 
tellers; but what man, however much he loved his 
country, would mention them in the same breath 
with Cromer, Milner, Kitchener, as public servants 
and patriots? Disagreeable as it may be for the 
American to say so, it is the difference between mas- 
tiffs and monkeys! In the long run, which of these 
two types of men is dull, the for years hard-working, 
unheard of Cromer, or the ceaselessly chattering 
simian public men we all have in mind? At least 
we must give credit where credit is due. When we 
take this superficial view of dulness, the Englishman 
shines by comparison with the oratorical flippancy 
and the ready acceptance of the part of after-dinner 
clown which have made so many reputations in 
America. Not that we have not our own type of 
self-sacrificing public servants in men like Wood, 
Magoon, Taft and scores more, but how shabbily 
do we reward them! 

There are three kinds of more or less intelligent 
men nowadays who encumber the earth: men who 
talk for the sake of talking; men who write for the 
sake of writing; men who read for the pleasure of 



154 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

reading. But they do nothing. They incite no one 
else to do anything, either by voice, pen or example. 
It is worth while remembering that this so-called 
dull race has produced the greatest literature since 
the days of Greece. I believe that the secret lies here : 
their great men have had things to say, instead of 
trying to write things. French literature is notable 
for trying to write things, phrase things elegantly, or 
saliently; attempting to put little thoughts in very 
fine clothes. 

We in America have had no time, no energy to 
spare for literature. What we have produced is of 
the second-rate order — with perhaps the exception 
of Poe and Hawthorne — with one piece of prose how- 
ever, unsurpassed in the English language since the 
King James version of the Bible, Lincoln's address at 
Gettysburg. Lincoln, no more than these English- 
men, was a man who wrote, or talked, for effect. He 
concentrated his energy and his brilliant powers, — 
powers unrecognized at the time by his fellows — 
upon one object, and he saved his country by his 
success. 

It is not strange that the people who believe in ac- 
tion should produce a great literature. All penmen 
envy men of action not only their deeds but their 
phrases. Raleigh, Cromwell, Clive, Hastings, Nel- 
son, Roberts, Grant, Lincoln, Lee and "Stonewall" 
Jackson have written phrases of memorable prose. 
"Trust in God and keep your powder dry!" writes 
Cromwell. " I stand astonished at my own modera- 
tion!" says CHve. "We'll fight it out on this line, if 
it takes all summer!" and "Unconditional surren- 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 155 

der!'^ are phrases of Grant. It would be a mockery 
of life if the men of deeds and daring did not write 
better than those who study them. Great literature 
has never been born inside four walls. It is tossed 
up from the sea, wrung from war, found by running 
streams, fed in pastures green, and heard best in the 
clash and clamor of the opposing forces of men in 
earnest for life and liberty. 

People think it strange that England's reputation 
in the world rests so largely on her aptitude for poetry 
and politics. Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Mil- 
ton! It is not far from the truth to say that every 
poet of the small first class is an Englishman, save 
one, Dante. Goethe and Schiller can hardly be 
classed with these, much less Corneille or Racine. 
But it is not strange. The nation of great deeds 
must of necessity be the nation of great words. 

So little do these English believe in mere talking 
and writing and reading as such; so little do they 
trust those superficial attributes that are generally 
classed under one head, as brilliant, that they have 
given astonishingly little attention to the education 
of the masses. While the rest of the Western world 
has given itself up to the fetish of universal education, 
they have been quietly giving themselves to the task 
of conquering, colonizing, and governing a fifth of 
the habitable globe. Consciously or unconsciously, 
they seem to realize that the asylums for the insane 
are peopled by those whose brains are too active or 
too morbid; not by those who are slow and dull. 
The dangers of modern civilization are mostly for the 
swift, not for the slow. 



156 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

Ten years after the beginning of the reign of the 
late Queen Victoria, not only the children of England, 
but practically one-half the adults, could neither read 
nor write. The marriage register is a good test of 
education, in England, at least, because the married 
must sign the register. At the time of which we are 
speaking, roughly fifty years ago, only sixty-seven 
men in an hundred, and fifty-one women in an hun- 
dred, could even sign their names. "This leaves lit- 
tle doubt," says the report of the Registrar-General 
of that date, " that thirty-three in one hundred of the 
men, and forty-nine in one hundred of the women at 
the marriageable age, are quite unable to write." 
We all know very well that the first thing one learns 
to write is one's own name. In addition to this large 
percentage of those unable even to write their own 
names, there must have been a large number who 
had learned just enough to sign their names and 
nothing more. To write is to read, and it is not 
stretching a point, therefore, to say that as late as 
fifty years ago at least one-half of the adult popula- 
tion of England and Wales — not to mention Ire- 
land, where the proportion was, and is, much larger 
— were in primitive ignorance. 

We in America had public schools before we were 
a nation; while England had won an empire before 
she had given a thought to the education of the 
masses. It was long after the beginning of the nine- 
teenth century before any attempt was made to break 
through the matted sward of ignorance of the labor- 
ing classes in England. 

To this day the Englishman is quite indifferent to 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 157 

this state of things. Their unobtrusive but virile 
self-confidence satisfies them that they must be right, 
that they must be superior. Those of the better class 
still assume that their use of the English language, 
for example, whether as written or spoken, is the only 
proper use thereof. Punch and the Saturday Review 
still write of Americans as they were wont to do half 
a century ago. If you have your Punch volumes at 
hand, turn to the year 1844 and read the article on 
''Etiquette for American Congressmen,'* or to the 
year 1846, pages 19, 71, and 82, or to page 104 of the 
year i860, and from these opinions the Englishman 
in the street has not changed. 

At the high table at Trinity College, Cambridge, 
sat an American dining as the guest of the Vice-Mas- 
ter. During the dinner his neighbor discovering that 
he was an American remarked with both flattery and 
surprise in his voice: "You are the only American 
who has ever dined with us whom we did not know 
to be an American by his speech." This is merely a 
typical instance of the never-ceasing surprise of these 
insular people to find an outsider using the common 
language with a deHcacy and purity equal to their 
own. What is the surprise, then, of the American, 
on his side, to find that England is the home of all 
those vices of speech of which he has been accused 
for so long of having the monopoly! 

Our slang and profanity, picturesque though they 
be, are constantly noted as peculiar to us. From 
the days of Elizabeth down, these people have been 
and are more coarsely profane than we. Elizabeth 
herself swore " By God's Son." In a letter to Bishop 



158 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

Coxe she wrote: "Proud prelate, you know what 
you were before I made you what you are; if you do 
not immediately comply with my request, by God I 
will unfrock you!" 

Shillingford, the Mayor of Exeter, wishes to make 
a present of fish to the Lord Chancellor. For some 
reason, the fault of the treasurer or of the carrier, 
the fish do not arrive, so he writes: "Christ's curse 
have they both and say ye Amen non sine merito, and 
but ye dare say so, think so, think so!'* After the 
Restoration "the new breed of wits and fine gen- 
tlemen never opened their mouths without uttering 
ribaldry of which a porter would now be ashamed, 
and without calling on their Maker to curse them, 
sink them, confound them, blast them, and damn 
them." The tendency to coarseness of speech still 
obtains. Their appeal is usually to the physical and 
fleshly. A charming English lady returning from 
the golf links on a wet day remarks that she is " in a 
nasty mess!" The EngHshman of a certain class 
uses "bloody," "beastly," "rotten," "bloomin'," 
and "Go on, you brute," he murmurs to his short 
puts at golf, while in commendation he expresses him- 
self by the hesitating, unimaginative "goodish," "not 
half bad," "useful," and so on. Where the EngHsh- 
man uses "cheeky beggar," the American's imagina- 
tion supplies him with "too previous." The vulgar 
EngHshman after eating heavily is "full up," while 
our Western American, accustomed to the overload- 
ing of the old-time stage-coach, repHes to the invita- 
tion to have more under the same circumstances, 
"ef I dew, I guess I'll hev to hang it on the outside." 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 159 

Both these replies are Boeotian if you please, but the 
latter is imaginative, a product of the intellect, the 
former merely a porcine grunt. 

The American vulgarities of speech have a touch 
of Homeric exaggeration, as when it is said of any-' 
thing very old that "it was old before Adam was a 
rag-baby," or of a well-beaten adversary that you 
"wiped up the floor with him." Analogous with 
these are the Psalmist's "he wept rivers of tears," or 
VirgiPs: 

"Primus abit, longeque ante omnia corpora Nisiis 
Emicat, et ventis et fulminis ocior alls." 

Mr. Chamberlain in a speech in the House of 
Commons speaks of a "put up job." The Spectator 
even writes of the evidence proving " that no man over 
forty can * stand the racket,'" and when one finds 
"chestnut" in the sense of an ancient joke, "bull- 
doze," " highfalutin' Tammany methods," "not in 
it," and "caught on," in the pages of reputable 
English journals, one begins to wonder if these ver- 
bal prodigies of a riotous rhetoric are after all so dis- 
tasteful as is pretended. 

Nowhere in America does one hear so constantly 
the nasal twang as in England. The New Englander 
says "teown" for town, "keow" for cow, "neow" 
for now, "yew deon't sai" for you don't say, and so 
do many of the old Englanders. "Baiby" is the 
cockney for baby, "plaice" the pronunciation of 
place, and these and the millions of orphaned 
aitches are far more common in England than in 



i6o ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

America, where at least every aitch is given a good 
home. 

If it be true that the test of pure English speech is 
that the speaker should give no indication by collo- 
quialisms, or by peculiarities of pronunciation of the 
place of his birth, or the university he has attended, or 
the class to which he belongs, then the best speakers 
of both countries are about on a par. Lord Rosebery, 
Mr. John Morley, now Lord Morley, Mr. James 
Bryce, and other less known Englishmen I can men- 
tion, speak as well as President Eliot of Harvard — 
the best speaker of English I have ever heard — and 
the late James Russell Lowell, the late George Wil- 
liam Curtis, and the late Charles Eliot Norton, but 
no Englishman speaks better, and very few as well. 

The most defencelessly objectionable English now 
spoken on the face of the globe is spoken by Ameri- 
cans — Americans who are attempting to speak like 
the English, for they speak neither like cultivated 
Americans, nor like the well-bred English. And let 
the American admit it to his shame that while there 
are such epicene fellow countrymen and country- 
women there are none such among the English. At 
any rate, however ridiculous his affectations, no 
EngHshman tries to speak like anybody but an 
EngHshman, and let this be said to his credit. They 
have their eccentricities of speech, but they indulge 
in no such folly as that. "Yes, skatin* would be 
charmin' if it weren't for the freezin' stoppin' the 
hunting" says the smart lady, and Lord Adolphus 
replies: *'Yes, and ain't sleighin' toppin' fun, except 
for the snowin' spoilin' the skatin'?" The EngHsh 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? i6i 

in certain smart circles make a rank affectation of 
careless speech, probably to prove that their position 
is such that they may speak as they please, but 
also because the English as a race have never given 
much thought, much credit or much reward to 
culture. The governing classes of England have 
governed by self-control, by common-sense, and by 
personal authority or superior character, but not by 
erudition or mental brilliancy. 

We in America perhaps overrate the value of educa- 
tion. We have been too busy for much culture, and 
so we exaggerate its importance. Ignotum pro mag- 
nifico, Mr. Carnegie, who is an uneducated man in 
the academic sense of the word, litters his own and 
other lands with libraries. With no disrespect to 
him, he probably thinks he would have been a more 
useful man had he been born to schools and libraries. 
I doubt it. To know things makes one less afraid in 
the world, just as in the case of a man in his social 
relations, the more at home he is the more readily he 
gives what he has to give, but the at-homeness does 
not produce what he has not got. So with education, 
it facilitates the use, and even exploits the use, of 
what one has, but it produces little. Education is 
a good training for nascent abiHty, and a good test 
of whether such ability exists at all, but it never of 
itself creates ability. 

The world has never been educated, so we in our 
ignorance are trying to convert man by training his 
mind. Laws were codified, and libraries, and art, 
and culture, existed before Moses. Indeed there was 
a code of laws in Babvlonia eight centuries before 



i62 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

Moses. One sometimes hears education spoken of 
in America as though it were a discovery, somewhat 
like the discovery of America itself by Columbus. It 
may be indeed, that we are preparing a disappoint- 
ment for ourselves as a nation, in depending so 
blithely upon universal education for our salvation. 
That a good deal can be done without it the history 
of England proves. Even the most perfunctory and 
the most elementary education is something of a 
novelty with them, and dates back not many years. 

Charity schools, as they were called, existed as 
early as the beginning of the eighteenth century, but 
they were founded and controlled by a private So- 
ciety for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and were 
undoubtedly conducted on narrow lines, with the 
specific object of teaching the children the catechism. 

Early in the nineteenth century two individuals, 
one Lancaster, a Quaker — who, by the way, after- 
ward died in America — and a Rev. Dr. Bell, started 
schools on their own account. The Quaker, Lan- 
caster, though an enthusiast, was impracticable, and 
soon brought down upon himself, and his schools, 
the violent opposition of the church; and the Dr. 
Bell schools, under the title: "National Society for 
Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles 
of the Church of England," now known as the ''Na- 
tional Society," were started as a result. This quar- 
rel between the Nonconformists and the Churchmen, 
which began at that time, has continued to this day. 
Indeed it is this same controversy which is even now, 
in this present (1908) Parliament, making the passing 
of a satisfactory Education Bill so difficult. 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 163 

In 1833 the first Parliamentary grant was made 
"for the purposes of education," and was only a 
meagre hundred thousand dollars, and even this was 
cautiously and specially limited to the building of 
school-houses. 

In 1870 an act was passed establishing School 
Boards. These Boards were to be elected by the 
rate-payers, were given power to levy rates, and to 
compel the attendance of the children. The Vol- 
untary Schools, schools largely supported by the 
Church of England, went on as before. Finally in 
1903 the Act of 1870 was superseded, the School 
Boards were abolished, and District Local Education 
Authorities were established to take over the manage- 
ment, both of the Board Schools and the Voluntary 
Schools, the former being now termed "provided," 
and the latter "unprovided'^ schools. From this 
brief summary it may be seen how very recently has 
England deemed it a province of the State to control, 
and to compel, national education. 

This is not the record of a nation given over to the 
things of the mind, or greatly impressed by the ad- 
vantages to be derived from universal education. It 
is this attitude of constant and satisfied indifference 
to such matters which has often exasperated such 
men as Matthew Arnold, for example, who main- 
tained that the fundamental reason for many of Eng- 
land's errors, " is our preference of doing to thinking." 

Indeed Arnold went so far as to describe the Eng- 
lish social system as landing "modern communities 
in the possessorship of an upper class materialized, 
a middle class vulgarized, a lower class brutalized." 



i64 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

This was the superficial, not to say the parochial, 
judgment of a man, who leaned so far toward culture 
that he became a prig. Education, trained intelli- 
gence, a wide range of reading, are not in and of 
themselves moral or efficient, or productive of com- 
fort or contentment. " Nine- tenths of the calamities 
which have befallen the human race had no other 
origin than the union of high intelligence with low 
desires," writes Macaulay. Education may engen- 
der sins of the mind, which are quite as dangerous 
as sins of the body. A forger is quite as dangerous 
to the community as a wife-beater. 

Many people look upon the question of education 
as though there were but one answer to it. This is 
by no means true. It is still a very open question 
whether or not the over emphasis of the intellectual 
side of the animal man is good for the individual, or 
profitable to the race. The shovel, the hoe, the pick 
and the plough are, after all, not only the necessities 
for the foundation of civilization, but experience has 
not proved that their employment is not also the most 
wholesome exercise for the vast majority of the hu- 
man race. We have yet to see an educated race 
which can survive and hold its place in the world. 
Greece to-day is represented in the world by an island 
covered with crumpled monuments. However that 
may be, there is no doubt, on the other hand, that 
thus far England's superiority rests also upon her 
grounded preference for doing rather than thinking. 

Voltaire maintained that: " On etudie les livres en 
attendant qu'on etudie les hommes." But the Eng- 
lish have made man and men and the best methods of 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 165 

controlHng them their study without bothering about 
any preliminary bookishness. Apparently they are 
not only proud that they do not understand, but also 
proud that they understand that it is better not to 
understand. They have no patience with, and no 
belief in^ the restless intellectual activity of the 
French, for example. A profound instinct arms 
them against intelligence, which they recognize as the 
greatest foe to action. Their predilection for action 
and commercial enterprises has been so lucrative that 
at the present moment the British Empire is fifty- 
three times the size of France, fifty-two times the size 
of Germany, three and a half times the size of the 
United States of America, and thrice the size of 
Europe, with treble the population of all the Russias, 
and embraces four continents, ten thousand islands, 
five hundred promontories and two thousand rivers. 
"Lud" was the god of commerce, who was wor- 
shipped in England in Pagan times. Ludgate Hill 
is a remainder, and a reminder, of "Lud." The 
Welsh still call London, "Caer Ludd," or Lud's 
Town. Thus it is seen how deep are the roots of 
their commercial supremacy. 

As in their political affairs, so in intellectual mat- 
ters, they leave it to the few to govern and to guide, 
reserving themselves to act behind them when called 
upon, just as their ancestors the Saxons did fifteen 
hundred years ago. If Mr. Pierpont Morgan were 
an Englishman, it would be impossible to imagine 
him as not in the House of Lords, and also in the 
Cabinet, if he would consent to serve there. England 
would compel a man of such signal abilities, a great 



i66 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

financier, a Christian gentleman, and over and over 
again a self-sacrificing patriot, to serve her as a coun- 
sellor. How is it in America! What President in 
our history thus far, except perhaps Washington or 
Lincoln, would imperil his popularity by asking him 
into his Cabinet! Why not? Simply because he is 
a rich banker. Is England dull, or is America dull, 
in this case? 

It is manifestly impossible to arrive at any exact 
statement of the quantity and quality of the reading- 
matter of a whole people. The likes and dislikes, 
the hopes and ambitions, the secret strivings and the 
mental processes of men, cannot be represented by 
numerals. It is nonetheless interesting to attempt 
to discover what the EngHsh read, as a commentary 
upon this reputation of theirs for dulness It is by 
no means impossible so to collate facts and figures, 
and to bring to bear subsidiary matters upon the 
subject, as to arrive at a fair general impression. 

There are, to begin with, a percentage of people 
in every country who do not read at all, or very little; 
there are others whose incomes and employments in- 
dicate that they probably limit themselves to a certain 
very light kind of reading; while more useful still as 
a factor in such a problem, every nation has a cer- 
tain personality of its own, from which one may 
judge that this or that special form of literature 
would be best suited to satisfy its hterary appetite. 
There is, too, in England, a large proportion of the 
actual readers, who read as a pastime, or as a sopo- 
rific, or as a dissipation. Their reading amounts to 
little either one way or the other. 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 167 

"Who reads 
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not 
A spirit, and a judgment equal or superior, 
Uncertain, and unsettled still remains 
Deep vers'd in books, and shallow in himself." 

When we come to divide up the population of Eng- 
land and Wales, for the purpose of discovering, even 
roughly, the number of persons whose reading is of 
little consequence, we find that something over four- 
teen millions fall into this class, including over six 
million school children under fourteen years of age; 
over a million paupers; a million nine hundred and 
fifty thousand domestic servants; three million la- 
borers in the agricultural, fishing and mining indus- 
tries; two millions engaged in textile manufactures 
or employed as tailors, seamstresses, and shoemakers; 
to say nothing of over one hundred thousand lunatics, 
and one hundred thousand bar-maids. Although, 
even here, it is unsafe to say that what these thirteen 
or fourteen millions of people read has no influence 
upon themselves or upon others, it is at least fair to 
conclude that whatever that influence, subjective or 
objective, may be, it is of small consequence. 

This condition of things is due: first, to the lack 
of free education facilities for children over fourteen 
years of age — until very recently there have been 
practically none; second, to the almost entire lack of 
free public libraries, of which later; third, to a well- 
defined, and to an American strange, but widely held 
opinion that the secular education of the masses does 
more harm than good — an opinion held by many 
among the masses themselves; fourth, to the dis- 



1 68 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

couraging lead of the classes in all matters of educa- 
tion over the even now heavily handicapped masses, 
which leads these latter to look upon their past and 
present condition as necessary and permanent; fifth, 
to the profound national instinct, which from highest 
to lowest, prefers doing to thinking; which always, 
everywhere, shaves down the ideal to the practical, 
and seeks a working hypothesis. 

The total number of schools receiving annual 
grants is twenty thousand six hundred and fifty-six. 
The number of children on the register of the educa- 
tion department is six millions, of whom five millions 
are, on an average, in daily attendance. Of these 
only some fifty thousand are over fourteen years of 
age. The reason for this remarkably small number 
of children above fourteen years of age is that this is 
the limit of age when a child is required to attend 
school, and also because, as has already been shown, 
there is no school machinery, and very little encour- 
agement in England, for the education of poor chil- 
dren who wish to go on beyond the provided curricu- 
lum of children of fourteen. The American system 
of compulsory free education, by means of which a 
lad may go on from primary school to grammar 
school, from grammar school to high school, and 
thence to college, without any expense for tuition, 
and very little for text-books, does not exist in Eng- 
land. 

The Budget for 1907-8 estimates the revenue at 
;^i44,i90,ooo and the expenditure at ;^i4o,757,ooo; 
of this only ;^2oo,ooo was set aside for educational 
grants, although in the Civil Service items, under the 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 169 

general head of "Education, Science and Art/^ is 
set aside the sum of ;£i7,49S,237. During the year 
1904-5 the pubHc expenditure on elementary educa- 
tion is estimated at ;^i 1,065,496 from the Imperial 
Exchequer; ;!$8,464,555 raised from Local Rates; 
;gi, 100,000 from Church of England and other Vol- 
untary School subscriptions; ;!g988,723 from Ragged 
and other charity schools. The distribution of this 
fund is such that only a small percentage of the 
population of Great Britain are even in the way of 
fitting themselves to read anything but the most la- 
mentably light and elementary literature. As a con- 
sequence of this policy, the percentage of adults who 
are, at least for all purposes of this discussion, prac- 
tically illiterate, is probably very high. There are, 
unfortunately, no figures in the census returns which 
enable one to say exactly what that percentage is. 
But exact figures are not necessary. This is not a 
problem of mathematics; it is a problem of tempera- 
ment. Overwhelming evidence is enough, without 
nicety of computation. The Home Office in 1893 
reported that of four and a half milhon total votes 
polled one hundred and thirty-five thousand were 
illiterate. If one voter in every thirty-four is illiter- 
ate, one may be quite sure that, including the remain- 
ing women and children and non-voters, the percent- 
age is very much higher; and these figures would be 
still further borne out did one care to make a calcula- 
tion from the facts already given in this chapter, con- 
cerning the signing of the marriage register; and also 
from the fact that even now ten men in an hundred, 
and twelve women in an hundred in England and 



170 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

Wales; and twenty- three men in an hundred, and 
twenty-five women in an hundred in Ireland, cannot 
sign the marriage register. How many more are 
practically unable to read and write! 

A phase of the subject, that from an American point 
of view desen^es repeated notice, is, that a large num- 
ber of intelligent people in England are altogether op- 
posed to free general education. They are the Con- 
servative, not to say the Tory Old Guard in politics 
and religion, who hold that the children, as of old, 
in each parish, should be taught to read and write, 
and to say their catechism, in the schools, under the 
supervision of the clergy, and then earn a living as did 
their forefathers. This system, which to all intents 
and purposes, in spite of the strides in the last few 
years, is still in vogue, explains why so many wtII- 
educated German youths are employed in London, 
to the dismay of their English rivals. One may lay 
aside for the nonce the ever-present bugaboo of the 
statistician, which is the fear of generalizing from in- 
complete details, to assert without reservation that it 
would be difl&cult to find an American who is utterly 
opposed to free education for the people, so long as it 
is not carried to a foolish length. In England, on the 
contrary, there is almost a party of reactionaries, with 
many of whom I have discussed this question, who 
scout the very idea that the education of the lower 
classes has benefited either those who have received 
it or those who have bestowed it. They point to the 
situation, as well they may, of a nation which, while 
paying little attention to technical education, and 
much attention to character and religious observ ance. 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 171 

has beaten out all rivals in the race for supremacy and 
respect among the nations. They hold to the Old 
Testament view, that com, wine and children are the 
fruit of the formal, God-fearing people, with which 
education has nothing to do. 

This attitude of mind, it must be emphasized here, 
is not one of arrogance. It has no flavor of superior- 
ity in the sense that these people feel that the lower 
classes are unworthy of notice, and incapable of be- 
coming hke themselves. We have already seen, in 
our discussion of the make-up of the House of Lords, 
that this is not the English spirit. At the bottom of 
this feeling is the thoroughly English instinct that 
what a man cannot earn, or get for himself, he does 
not deserve. They are not believers in any of the 
modern nostrums for the artificial stimulating of the 
body poHtic, under the generic title of socialism. The 
socialistic section of the labor party makes more noise 
than progress. On the other hand, no people in the 
world give more heartily or more generously to those 
who succeed, no matter from what social layer they 
come, than do the English. They have no weakness 
of logic and principle to prevent their worship of God 
and Mammon at one and the same and all the time. 
The Jew, the fop, the novelist, the cynic Disraeli, be- 
comes Prime Minister and Earl of Beaconsfield. The 
able man may be what he will, come from whence 
he may — if he can serve England, he always has of 
her best. There is no false, no foolish, pride in their 
attitude toward this question of education. It is 
purely practical; all a matter of personal efficiency. 

The following figures show better than any expres- 



172 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

sion of opinion the difference between England and 
America in this matter. The census of 189 1 counted 
606,505 men and 765,917 women of sixty-five years 
and upward in England and Wales, or a total of 
1,372,422, of whom 401,904, or nearly one-third, re- 
ceived parish rehef. Over against this set the other 
statement that in 1874 in a House of Commons of 
658 members, 235 of them were Oxford or Cambridge 
men, and 100 of them, or six and a half per cent of 
them, were old Etonians. In the last ParHament of 
670 members, 371, or more than one-half, were gradu- 
ates of the two great universities; while in the United 
States Senate, at the same date, there were 14, and in 
the House of Representatives 22, graduates of our 
dozen more prominent colleges, or 36 in all. 

It would be difficult to put it more clearly if one 
piled facts and figures upon facts and figures for page 
after page that in England the classes are educated 
and rule, while the masses have little voice in adminis- 
trative matters, and fall toward the end of their lives 
into helpless and rheumatic dependence; while in 
America the general average of prosperity is higher, 
though men of first-rate ability are fewer. To put 
it in another fashion, if we lined up man for man, 
our American standard, whether physical, moral or 
material, would be immeasurably higher than theirs; 
but if we lined up our million best men against the 
million best EngHshmen, we should not reach their 
standard, nor, for that matter, would a million men 
from any other nation in the world. In physical cour- 
age and pluck we should be their equals, but in all- 
round efficiency they are superior. Let us not forget, 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 173 

however, that they are a thousand years old, we are 
an hundred years old — we are in our first youth, they 
are in their prime. 

We have noted the influence of the climate upon 
other features of English life; it has also a notable 
influence upon this matter of reading. The mild and 
equable temperature of England, which permits one 
to be out-of-doors, and consequently to take part in 
some form of sport or labor all the year round, lessens 
materially the time given to reading. Other things 
being equal, the inhabitants of a mild climate will 
read less than people who are perforce kept in-doors 
many weeks of the year by great heat or intense 
cold. 

No country in the world has such a never-ending 
round of sports in which so large a proportion of the 
population take part as has England — bicycling and 
motoring all the year round; hunting from October 
to April; racing of a kind all the year round; golf,, 
which has developed from a game into a widely prev- 
alent disease, all the year round; cricket and tennis 
from April till October, shooting from August till 
January; foot-ball, played, alas, by professionals, 
but as many as two hundred thousand people in at- 
tendance at one game, from September till May; and, 
besides these, coursing, fishing, boating, and a long 
et ccetera of other pastimes. Nor are these sports con- 
fined to the rich and idle, or even to the well-to-do 
alone. Again I repeat, England is the most demo- 
cratic country in the world, where the rights of the 
individual are more respected, where the individual 
has more of personal freedom, and where the indi-> 



174 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

vidual is less trammelled by artificial barriers of birth 
or class jealousy, in his efforts to rise, than anywhere 
else in Christendom; for to miss this characteristic 
is to lose the explanation of many apparent anoma- 
lies. Aristocracy exists only where few people are 
free. Where every one is free, where every one feels 
himself to have aristocratic privileges, there is no 
aristocracy. 

It is, strange to say, in America, not in England, 
that one hears much talk about the tailor grandfather 
of A, the shoemaker grandfather of B, the washer- 
woman grandmother of C, and so on. In England 
his lordship, the parson, the squire, and the butcher, 
the baker, the candlestick-maker, go galloping across 
the fields together after the hounds, and the best man 
among them is he with his head and his heart up, 
and his hands and heels down, and a good one under 
him. The meeting-place is advertised in the local 
papers, and it is not necessary to wear pink to join in 
the sport; and one may see such a mingling of classes 
on terms of purely horsemanship equality as one sel- 
dom sees in America, and never in any country on the 
Continent of Europe. 

The same is true of the cricket field, where the 
county magnate, the parson, the young squires of the 
neighborhood, play under the captaincy of some local 
tradesman's son, proving again that the genuine aris- 
tocrat is the best democrat and that the snob and 
the prig lack something, if not everything, of being 
gentlemen. A man must always be much more what 
he is than what he has. The danger in a prosperous 
and commercially active civilization is that we may 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 175 

forget this, and begin to see men with distorted vision 
as having much, rather than as being true. England 
has somehow escaped this. Indeed, practically the 
only people either in England or America whom one 
hears talking much of what it is, or what it is not, to 
be a gentleman, are they who secretly suspect their 
own claims to the title. The very first requisite of 
the gentleman is that he should have forgotten at 
least an hundred years ago that he is one. 

It may give some idea of the part played by out- 
door life in England to say, that it is difficult to find 
an EngHshman between eighteen and sixty-five in 
fair health and not supported by the rates who is not 
a performer at some kind of sport or interested in 
some phase of it. Of the nearly seven hundred re- 
views and magazines of a non-religious character 
printed in England, one in six is largely devoted to 
some form of out-of-door sport or pastime. Be- 
tween 1880-85, according to a private index kept in 
the British Museum, there were 266 books published 
on the one subject of sport and athletics, and between 
1885-90, 412. During the ten years ending 1907, 
there were published 2,024, under the general head 
of Travel; 569 under the general head of Geographi- 
cal Research; 5,498 under the general head of His- 
tory; and 1,059 Biographies, and over 1,200 books 
dealing with questions of Trade. This shows the 
general trend of thought and action. Their serious 
literature deals largely with men and the doings of 
men. 

In a word, John Bull loves the fresh air. He is 
a sportsman, an athlete, a soldier, sailor, traveller. 



176 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

a colonist rather than a student, and all the figures 
bear one out in making the statement During those 
trying days in the Crimea these sport-loving "young 
barbarians" were "all at play" when they were not 
fighting, racing their ponies, playing cricket, and off 
shooting such game as there was. One family in 
England, the Pelhams, have hunted the Brocklesby 
pack of hounds for more than one hundred and 
seventy-five years. 

While Italy has twenty-one universities, Germany 
twenty, and France fifteen, England has only seven. 
On the other hand, the value of the sea-borne com- 
merce of Great Britain and her colonies is double that 
of all European countries combined, or a total of im- 
ports and exports for the year 1906 of $5,344,120,960. 
Of the immense possessions, and the enormous pop- 
ulation, over which they exercise control, we have 
already written. In addition, it is calculated — 
though I mention these figures diffidently as more 
or less guesswork — that they own foreign securities 
to the amount of over $3,000,000,000. 

A nation of students does not exploit itself along 
those lines. These people are the Romans of niod- 
ern times, slow, vigorous, law-loving, law-abiding, 
and colonizers of the best type, but not students. 
They are contented, confident. Their disregard of 
philosophy proves their happiness. What they are, 
and what they have, satisfies them. It is the unhappy 
man, who indulges in thought, and dreams himself 
and others into non-existent situations, who comes 
back to be disappointed by the real world. These 
people live always in the real world. 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 177 

When it is said that the English are, as compared 
with the Germans, or even with the Americans, a non- 
reading race, we have still facts and figures to give 
concerning the reading population. To begin with, 
the census of 1901 for England and Wales groups 
under the heading. Professional Class, 972,685 per- 
sons, and of these, it may be supposed, that all are 
readers. Most startling of all, despite the fact that 
there are over a million more women than men in Eng- 
land, there are under the head of Unoccupied Class 
1,977,283 males and 9,017,834 females in England 
and Wales; 264,893 males and 1,198,618 females in 
Scotland, and 786,097 males and 1,708,861 females in 
Ireland, or out of the total population of Great Britain 
and Ireland of 43,219,788 there are 14,953,586 per- 
sons who have no occupation, or one-third of the 
population. It goes without saying that "unoc- 
cupied" here does not mean "idle," since it is pre- 
cisely from among the unoccupied classes that the 
rulers of the Empire come. This large unoccupied 
class in England, larger than that of any other coun- 
try in the world, is due to the overcrowding, 445 per- 
sons to the square mile in 1881; 497 in 1891; and 
558 in 1901; to the competition, which forces people 
to be conservative, and to be satisfied with a small 
but secure income; to the willingness of the English- 
man to live on a small but secure income, if he may 
be independent and hunt and shoot a little, and play 
games; to the fact that there are so many idle men in 
England for companions; also because there is noth- 
ing derogatory as with us in having no imperative 
occupation; and to the civil service system which 



178 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

pensions off the servants of the various departments 
of the State, there being some 175,000 persons in 
England hving upon State pensions. 

In this connection it is suggestive to find that there 
are more than 140,000 members of London clubs 
alone, and we are not far wrong in guessing that one 
man in every thirty of voting age and upward is a 
member of a club, not including workingmen's clubs, 
free reading-rooms, and the like. These, and many 
more besides, are the devourers of the newspapers, 
sporting papers, and the magazines. And this brings 
one to the subject of the position held by the news- 
papers in the national life of England. 

The newspaper is a member of the family in every 
reputable household in England and regularly comes 
to breakfast with them. Already in 1854 the circula- 
tion of the Times was nearly 52,000; of the Morning 
Advertiser 8,000; of the Daily News 4,000; of the 
Morning Herald 4,000; of the Chronicle and Post 
each 3,000. The London Times was until lately a 
sort of eldest son among newspapers, and Punch 
the jolly bachelor uncle who made occasional visits. 
But the number and influence of other newspapers 
have vastly increased. The Times no longer carries 
the weight that it did, and party newspapers are play- 
ing a larger and larger role. The sensational, " up- 
to-date" newspaper still finds it difficult to make 
headway in England. No one cares apparently to 
devour the happenings of every hour, whether true 
or false. It is easier and cheaper to wait till to-mor- 
row and get the truth. The English are lacking, too, 
in that nervous obsession of occupation which drives 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 179 

the American to read trash in the train rather than 
to do nothing. 

Just as men have been obliged to adapt themselves 
to life in great cities, so whole populations to-day are 
striving to adapt themselves mentally to the omni- 
present, omniprinting newspaper. The dust and tur- 
moil and excitement of great aggregations of popu- 
lation, the constant strain on eyes, and ears, and 
throat, and nerves, have changed the physique of 
mankind. The dusty chatter of the newspapers is 
working upon the mental make-up of mankind in 
much the same way. Too much comes pelting upon 
minds untrained to analyze and incapable of sifting 
the grain from the chaff. The more generally edu- 
cated, and the more generally curious mentally, are 
those who suffer most from this dust-cloud of the 
newspapers. Men who are only intelHgent enough 
to keep in one way, and to do one task, and to serve 
one master, are diverted, excited, made discontented, 
and led astray, by this enormous variety of news, 
which comes to them every day, but which concerns 
them not at all. How true this is is seen in the 
curious temptation to murder, suicide and crimes of 
all kinds which follows upon the prolonged and de- 
tailed discussion of such matters in the newspapers. 
Many people are like children, to whom it would be 
a mercy to keep them in ignorance of many of the 
grosser happenings which fill the newspapers. Here 
again the duller, less curious people have an advan- 
tage. They are not diverted, they are not excited, 
not impelled hither and thither to disconnected action 
and thought, which leads nowhere, and tempts men 



i8o ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

to the discussion, and to the handling, of matters 
for which they lack both experience and capacity. 
Some great statesman may have the courage m these 
democratic days to say, or perhaps some great physi- 
ological psychologist to demonstrate, that certam oc- 
cidental peoples are suffering from having been edu- 
cated too fast! They are trying too many remedies 
at once, like a child in a sweet-shop; or they are 
glorying in political panaceas which were tried and 
found wanting centuries ago, but they do not know 
quite enough to know it. This alert intelligence 
working in a cloud is more dangerous than ignorance, 
where the real progress of a people is concerned. 
Here again, the Enghsh, consciously or unconsciously, 
have suffered less than any other first-class modern 
nation from this distracting power of the press, and 
for the reasons we have outlined. 

Englishmen, however, still take their newspapers 
into their confidence and have a naive way of writing 
to them on all sorts of subjects. If an Englishman 
rows down the Thames and stops for luncheon at an 
inn and is overcharged, he promptly writes to his 
newspaper, and later on, his first letter is followed by 
others, in which the comparative merits and cost ot 
light luncheons on the Continent, in Canada, in 
Central Asia, in Seringapatam, in Kamchatka, and 
everywhere else where Englishmen have eaten and 
drunk — and where have they not eaten and drunk? 
- is discussed at length. This goes on till we have 
a complete international history of mid-day gastro- 
nomies. Then the editor writes at the bottom, 
^'We cannot continue this correspondence," and 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? i8i 

the affair is over. V^ery often it is delightful 
reading. 

If a horse stumbles and falls in Rotten Row, there 
are letters on the subject which go into the matter of 
road-building, modern horsemanship, best methods 
of shoeing horses, and the like, with quotations from 
Xenophon — who by the way wrote some of the best 
pages ever written on the subject — from Virgil, and 
anecdotes of accidents that happened half a century 
ago, and so on. 

Half a dozen Englishmen go to Homburg. Find- 
ing that the golf course there is not to their taste, they 
sign a round-robin on the subject, and send it to the 
Times. They write letters on the lynching of negroes 
in our Southern States, on the subject of our bank- 
ing system, our methods of finance, our presiden- 
tial candidates, our hotels, our iced water, our over- 
heated trains, our lack of swift justice to criminals; 
some of them good, some foolish, but all with that 
ponderous sense that the Englishman is responsible 
for the contemporary auditing of the accounts of the 
Day of Judgment. The world belongs to him 
who takes it, and the Englishman takes it with a 
confidence and nonchalance that one cannot help 
admiring. This habit results in a sort of signal 
system to all Englishmen everywhere. This is 
condemned, that is praised. The Englishman is 
warned against this, and recommended to do that, 
and so he swings around the globe noting every- 
thing, criticising every thing, telhng his country- 
men about everything. He feels somehow that 
his supervision keeps things in order, and makes 



i82 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

things easier for every other Englishman. Perhaps 
it does! 

On the other hand, the better class English news- 
papers do not indulge in rash suppositions, hasty 
generalizations, uncertain guesses at probable future 
happenings, and the daily exploitation of the personal 
affairs of notorious nobodies. And one may say dif- 
fidently that this is distinctly preferable to the 
methods of certain of our own journals, which have 
dropped into miscellaneous meddling, in their rage 
for news. 

If Mr. Balfour, for example, were to go abroad for 
a holiday, it would be considered contemptible to 
chronicle his doings and dinings, and absolutely bru- 
tal and boorish to write particulars of the dress and 
behavior of his sister, or his wife, if he had one. The 
sense of fair play of a nation of sportsmen would not 
permit an editor to torment even his enemy from be- 
hind a woman's petticoats. 

So far as possible the newspaper maintains a 
strictly impersonal point of view. There is plenty 
of discussion and plenty of criticism of men and 
measures, but rarely any attributing of mean, or dis- 
honorable, or interested motives. There is no at- 
tempt, as in the French journals, to be epigram- 
matic, smart, to make a hit, no matter what it costs 
in dignity and truthfulness. 

These Englishmen fight one another sturdily 
enough in the press, and on the floor of the House of 
Commons, but personally they are friendly. They 
never dream of disgracing journalism or politics, or 
of making their country ridiculous, just for the mo- 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 183 

mentary pleasure of planting a barb where it will 
rankle most in an opponent's body. ''My brother 
and I quarrel, but it is my brother and I against the 
world!" It is ground into them that no private af- 
fair, no hurt of their own, no enemy whom they wish 
to punish, can for a moment excuse any harm they 
do their country, in indulging personal spite. I do 
not maintain for a moment that this high code of 
breeding is never broken, but it is to their honor 
that this is their code at all, that this is their 
ideal. 

It is amusing to see their stupefaction, their serious 
open-eyed wonder, when such a politician as Keir 
Hardie breaks away from their traditions, and fo- 
ments, or is alleged to foment, discord in the ranks 
of the EngHsh possessions. They are studying the 
problem now, as I write, but with no solution in view. 
An EngHshman who is an enemy of England, as Eng- 
land has always been, is a strange creature, and as 
yet they have settled upon no plan for dealing with 
him. 

The women, who at the moment, are asserting their 
right to the ballot, and who are using fantastic meth-j 
ods to advertise, and to bring to the attention of the 
public, their demands, are treated both by statesmen 
and poHcemen with a bored kind of patience. It is 
annoying, but hardly worth while taking seriously, 
they seem to think. Englishmen generally, but 
secretly, hold the opinion of their greatest living 
novelist: " The last thing man will civilize is woman!" 
The average Englishman would add, particularly 
foreign women. He knows, too, by an unique experi- 



i84 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

ence of conquest, that the last resort, the final tribu- 
nal, in the settlement of questions between men, or 
between nations, is force; and that therefore women 
have no right to a final voice in questions that they 
are physically debarred from settling, in the only way 
that they can be settled, in a world such as it is at 
present. Here again he refuses to be led astray by 
either theory or sentiment. He knows the fact, and 
by hard experience; that is enough. 

So fundamental is this feeling about England 
wherever her flag floats, about EngHshmen wherever 
they are; so imbued are they with pride in them- 
selves and their country, that even recognized evils 
are handled gently and circumspectly, and, above all, 
slowly, lest harm be done. There are of course flip- 
pant, careless journals in England, but the bulk of 
them mirror the sentiments above described, and are, 
even though they differ widely politically, always an 
aid to the State, anxl champions of their brothers^ 
right or wrong, against the world. 

Although there is no way of knowing with exact- 
ness the comparative amount of newspaper reading 
in England and America, the fact of the wholesome 
and patriotic influence of the British press must pass 
unquestioned. Though the best of the English jour- 
nals assume an attitude of fair play, there is always 
a tinge of superiority in their comments upon foreign 
affairs, particularly when the foreigner chances to be 
a political or trade rival. They choose as news from 
America, or from Germany, the less flattering hap- 
penings, and give them, whether with or without 
comment, in a way to suggest inferiority. This is 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 185 

the gentlemanly way of causing irritation, but it is 
none the less effectively exasperating. In spite of an 
assumption of friendliness, there is no press in Europe 
which does so much to humiliate America and the 
Americans as the English press. It may be inten- 
tional, or it may be merely the feeling that between 
friends one may be more frank than with other peo- 
ple; but the fact remains, and can be easily proved 
by copious quotations, were it worth while. I make 
no affirmations as to motives, since these pages are 
written that we may understand, and distinctly not 
to further misunderstanding. 

The Enghshman takes his newspaper much more 
seriously than does the American, first, because his 
newspaper is as a rule more accurately and serk)usly 
written, — certain of their journals, the Spectator 
and Times for example, are unimpeachable in their 
style and temper — and notably because of the wider 
sweep of interest, and the broader horizon oSered to 
the English newspaper reader, due almost wholly to 
the fact that all the news, and every interest of the vast 
British Empire, is centred, not in forty-eight diSerent 
states, but in London. 

Such a newspaper as the Observer ^ which appears 
only on the Sunday, is one of the best newspapers I 
know. It is well printed on good paper, its news is 
carefully chosen with an eye to the greatest variety 
of interests, and its editorial matter is sane and well 
informed. As a model of brilliant editing it ranks 
with one of our own best newspapers, the Sun. On 
the other hand, there is no newspaper, French, Ger- 
man or American, so thoroughly vulgar, so grossly, 



i86 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

sometimes even so licentiously, coarse, as one Eng- 
lish newspaper devoted mainly to racing. It is with 
astonishment that one sees it for sale on the public 
news-stands, and on the tables in respectable houses. 
In Paris one sees illustrations and reads paragraphs 
in the papers which at first make the Puritan-bred 
gasp, but one says to oneself, this is Paris! But to 
see a newspaper whose front page blossoms with the 
most disgusting allusions and the most lascivious 
jokes sold in England on all the news-stands leaves 
one bewildered. Does this prudish England not 
understand these jokes, or does she not care, or is it 
possible that the EngHsh at bottom enjoy this lowest 
form of stable-boy humor? 

The English newspapers are, therefore, to be taken 
seriously into account when one estimates what, and 
to what purpose, English people read. Their ephem- 
eral intellectual provender is heavier than ours, and, 
be it said, more instructive and less exciting. 

Englishmen are easily the most numerous, and the 
most careful, travellers in the world. Men who hope 
to make journalism their profession, or men training 
themselves for public office, look upon a trip around 
the world as a necessary part of their curriculum. 
This reacts upon their newspapers and magazines, 
which receive weighty communications from experts 
wherever a British interest is threatened, and when- 
ever the British lion's paw is suspected of being used 
to roast somebody else's chestnuts. Nothing does 
more to keep up the tone of the daily press than this 
intimate and serious interest that so many English- 
men take in their newspapers; while the wide and 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 187 

varied interests of Imperial control — there is seldom 
a month when the British army, or British diplomacy, 
or the British navy is not actively at work in some 
part of these wide domi-nions — give to the news- 
papers an heroic cast, and a dramatic concern, which 
in themselves supply the place of other literature. It 
is the policy, too, of many of them to maintain corre- 
spondents in the various capitals, who are not only 
men of sound training, but men of breeding and 
culture. They have, as a result, unusual facilities 
for keeping Englishmen at home well posted. It is 
a pity that our great journals do not do the same. 
An intelligent, well-bred correspondent abroad is 
better than countless cables. Therefore it is that, in 
casting about to discover what the English people 
read, one gives great weight to the fact that they 
are a nation who take their newspapers seriously, 
and, in reading them, become possessed of a great 
variety of information, and in the main accustomed 
to a sound style of writing and thinking. There are 
something under two thousand newspapers published 
in England and Wales. 

Judging, then, from these diverse facts brought to 
bear upon what the English read, what are we led to 
conclude? What would such a fellow as John Bull 
read? Newspapers, magazines, novels, particularly 
novels of sport, adventure and travel; and next 
travels, history, biography, exploration, and then, 
because the bulk of the English are Puritan still, 
books of a reHgious character. An analytical table 
of books published in London in a given year shows 
the following: 



1 88 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

NEW BOOKS NEW EDITIONS 

Theology 459 74 

Novels and Fiction 518 104 

Political Economy and Trade .71 14 

Voyages, Geography .... 247 74 

History, Biography 269 65 

Poetry, Drama 197 37 

Belles Lettres, Essays .... 96 ii 

Sport 75 

Out of the list of books published this same year, 
1,435 o^ them were devoted to fiction, travel, biog- 
raphy, history and sport. 

To an American, particularly if he live in be-libra- 
ried Massachusetts, it must seem strange that in 
writing of what John Bull reads no use is made of 
library statistics. When it is said that the first rate- 
supported library in England was opened to the pub- 
lic only in 1852, and that there are now only some 
two hundred such libraries, it becomes apparent how 
small a factor this is. In the state of Massachusetts 
alone 248 of the 351 cities and towns have free pubHc 
libraries, and there are besides 23,000 school libraries 
in the United States, containing 45,000,000 volumes. 
A careful calculation made some few years ago 
showed that in 106 of the total of 165 lending libra- 
ries in England there were 389,698 net borrowers, 
and of them, on the average, nearly 80 per cent called 
for fiction and juvenile literature, and therefore what 
some 78,000 readers in the free lending libraries read, 
even if one could know, would be of small service in 
showing what the English people read. Mudie's 
Select Library and Smith's Lending Library have 
over 60,000 subscribers and probably 250,000 read- 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? iSg 



ers, but here again one-third of the books they dis- 
tribute are novels. 

In short, the only method which results, or can 
result, in anything like a satisfactory answer to the 
question as to the reading tendencies of the English 
people is the broad method of dealing with the na- 
tion as a whole. Doubtless there is here or there 
a governess writing a "Jane Eyre"; or a school-boy 
wasting his time in preparing to write a "Vanity 
Fair"; or a dull boy at his arithmetic who will some 
day be called The Grand Old Man and make poetry 
of future budgets; or a young fop in Piccadilly who 
may seem to belong to the class of non-readers, and 
wear his rings outside his gloves, and yet who is 
destined to receive ;;gio,ooo for another "Lothair," 
and to make his Queen an Empress — who knows ? 
At any rate I am not so enamoured of my figures that 
I am not willing, like Luther's school-master, to lift 
my hat to these possibilities. 

The countless exceptions to any and every rule, 
the undoubted prowess of English scholars and states- 
men, and the maintenance of an uncommonly high 
average tone in matter, manner and method of the 
English newspapers and periodicals, prove fairly 
enough that, though the English nation is not a 
nation of readers, there must be a percentage, by 
no means small, who demand and who succeed in 
getting a high class of reading for their daily con- 
sumption. 

On the other hand, it is equally fair to say that the 
38,000,000 inhabitants of a small island, who offer 
next to no facilities for the higher education of the 



190 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

poorer classes, who have over a million paupers, over 
a million and a half of domestic servants, three mil- 
lion out-of-door laborers, two million and a half work- 
ing in mills, factories and shops, and who yet have 
conquered and rule a population in partibus outnum- 
bering them twelve to one, cannot be spoken of as a 
nation of readers, students, thinkers. 

In short, the great bulk of the English people read 
nothing, literally nothing; he who knows something 
of rural England will agree to this; the casual and 
occasional reader reads, as we have shown, fiction, 
biography, history, travels and no small amount of 
theology in a diluted form; the large middle class 
read and trust their periodical literature and their 
newspapers; the students and real readers, who feed 
their minds as other men feed their bodies, read with 
more thoroughness and patience than any men I 
know. The preliminary examinations for any col- 
lege at Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh or DubHn are 
trifling as compared with the entrance examinations 
at Harvard, but, on the other hand, both the classical 
and mathematical men who take the highest rank in 
England go through an amount of reading that our 
men hardly dream of. In America there is a very 
wide-spread education of the hare; in England there 
is, confined to narrow limits, a very thorough-going 
education of the tortoise. 

But here again, what does this prove? Who has 
not known men with enough university sheepskin to 
make a wardrobe, who were sterile critics, or vacillat- 
ing incompetents! Who forgets how small were the 
libraries and the early opportunities of Washington, 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 191 

Lincoln, Grant and Cleveland! This silent, non- 
gesticulating, steady, non-reading race, who have 
given, until very lately, almost no attention to gene- 
ral education, are very often spoken of as dull. On 
the surface, to quicker, more responsive, more genial 
peoples, this seems true. But beware of believing 
it! It is one of those boomerang errors that does 
harm to a rival when he least, and where he least, ex- 
pects it. Their orderliness, their respect for law, 
their genius for give and take, and their national 
solidarity, which thus far have kept them well to the 
fore among the peoples of the earth, are not the result 
of dulness in any intelligent use of the word. It is 
one of those wide-spread misapprehensions well worth 
a chapter by itself to explain, and to contradict, for 
the benefit of both the enemies and the friends of 
England. 

Indeed, the most interesting and the most notable 
commentary upon this phase of English life is the 
present attitude of both the German and the French 
better-class parents. It is astonishing to hear a 
group of well-to-do German fathers stating that they 
intend to send their sons to an English public school. 
Why, one asks. Out of the mass of reasons given 
one disentangles the fact that the Germans are begin- 
ning to see that they educate their youths, but they 
do not train them. The English pubHc-school boy 
is governing all over the world, while the German 
boy serves him as a clerk. The Englishman has a 
way of gaining the confidence, the affection even, of 
stranger races, and of handling them and govern- 
ing them with least friction. As one German said: 



192 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

" We must produce men who can govern, if we expect 
to colonize successfully." The German schools do 
not do this. The same is true of the French schools. 
Recently I have been traveUing by road in a leisurely 
fashion through France. One sees school-houses 
everywhere, games, sports, evidences of private 
wealth, nowhere. The English boy would be as a 
child in an examination room compared to French or 
German boys of his own age. But he is far more to 
be depended upon, a far more companionable person, 
and much more at home in the world. The French 
and German youths are stuffed to the brim with book- 
learning, while the English lad is in many respects a 
man. If the three of them go out to the colonies we 
all know what happens. The French boy keeps the 
books, the German boy attends to the foreign corre- 
spondence, and the English boy manages both. A 
great German manufacturer who has a number of 
EngHshmen as heads of different departments said 
naively: "Somehow these Englishmen seem to get 
on better with the work-people." 

The same thing is true of the Englishman in India. 
The India Babu, or educated native, is intelligent, 
often brilliantly educated, but he is hopeless as a 
governor. He lacks initiative, he fears, and wilts 
under responsibility, and is unfit to deal out justice. 
I have no brief for the Englishman, but one must give 
him his due in this respect. The secret of his success 
is, in part at least, due to his training by men in his 
pubhc schools; in the rough welding he gets from 
his school-fellows, which hardens him, and at the 
same time softens him in his treatment of others, and 



ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 193 

which knocks any idea of bumptiousness or boasting 
cut of him, and makes him test himself and others 
by deeds and trustworthiness rather than by words 
and book-learning. He may well say to the German 
and the Frenchman, if this be dulness, make the most 
of it! 

Nonetheless, one must answer the question cate- 
gorically, the question which is the subject of this 
chapter. To the average foreigner, the average Eng- 
lishman and Enghshwoman is dull. This dulness, 
as has been explained, is their safety and their suc- 
cess. You may call the chess-board black, you may 
call it white. It resolves itself into a question of 
taste. To the American, to the Frenchman, to the 
quick-witted of all nations, the Enghsh are distinctly 
dull, but out of this root of dulness has grown an 
overshadowing national tree. 



VI 

SPORT 

IF one were writing of France, of Germany, of 
Italy, of Russia, of Spain, no one would notice 
the omission of a chapter on sport. A few pages 
upon hunting and shooting in France, of which there 
is still a certain amount; upon the students* duelling, 
and the hunting of the wild boar in Germany; upon 
the shooting over the enormous preserves in Hungary; 
upon big-game shooting in some parts of Russia, and 
upon bull-fighting in Spain, would sufl&ce to give an 
idea of the relative importance of sport in those 
countries. 

It is very different in England. The first thing to 
attract my attention on this my latest visit to England 
was the announcement on all the newspaper bulletins : 
England'' s Big Task. I happened to know that the 
Prime Minister was seriously ill, that there was fierce 
debating in the House of Commons upon the esti- 
mates for the navy, and upon the new licensing bill 
just brought in by Mr. Asquith, and that there was 
fighting upon the frontier of India with a certain tribe 
of natives. But England's big task had nothing to 
do with these trivial matters. An English cricket 
eleven was playing in Australia. The Australian 
eleven in their second innings had made an unex- 

194 



SPORT 195 

pectedly big score, and England's big task was to beat 
that score. 

Though England may be fighting somewhere in 
her vast dominions all the time, she is also playing 
somewhere all the time. Unless the war is a very 
important one, there is more interest taken in the 
playing than in the fighting. They are verily a na- 
tion of game-players and out-door sportsmen. 

If we could know just what circumstances, and 
what environment our children would be born to, and 
what tasks they would be set to do, we could in time 
do as well with them as with horses and dogs. The 
trouble lies not in heredity, but in the haphazard of 
what awaits them. A horse is bred to run, or to trot, 
or to draw heavy loads, and we know exactly what 
we expect of him twenty years before he is born. 
With ourselves it is different. Few parents know 
what a son will be called upon to face at the age of 
twenty-one. Whether there will be a war and he 
must serve his country in arms; whether family fort- 
unes will be on the ebb and he must make money; 
whether a friend will offer him a start in anything, 
from a machine-shop to a newspaper ofl&ce. It is 
impossible even to train him for a pursuit, or a pro- 
fession, that is still in the hazy distance. Civiliza- 
tion is the great disintegrator. As we become rich 
we dissipate our energies, we think of our dinners, our 
horses, our dogs, our friends, our books, our clubs, 
our travelling. A little strength and power goes to 
each. The peasant, the poor man, must perforce 
direct all his powers to one end, and often he becomes 
master there, while the rich become weak and small 



/ 



196 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

in scattered interests. So families cannot and do not 
keep their places. The rough and poor and strong 
come in and take them. Simplicity easily beats out 
complexity and dissipation in a few generations. 
Hence the constant redistribution of wealth and 
power. Until we can overcome this ever-present 
obstacle to the successful breeding of human beings, 
socialism, it would seem, is an unnecessary philos- 
ophy. Nature beats socialism hollow at her own 
game. 

The English common-sense comes to the fore again 
in an attempt to solve this problem. She is old 
enough to know from experience that the world is still 
ruled by men, and in all probability will be for a long 
time to come. She breeds men therefore as strong 
and simple as she can. In these islands sport is not 
a dissipation for idlers, it is a philosophy of life. 
They beheve in it as a bulwark against effeminacy 
and decay. 

A Congregational minister makes a speech in 
which he confesses to "a feeHng of bitter humiliation'* 
when he reads that the Prime Minister is the owner 
of a Derby winner, and stands to win or lose thou- 
sands of pounds on the race. Lord Rosebery's atten- 
tion having been called to this speech by a political 
opponent, he replies as follows: "Sir, I am desired 
by Lord Rosebery to thank you for your letter and its 
enclosure. He will offer no opinion on the latter, for 
these matters should be dealt with according to the 
good taste, Christian charity, and knowledge of facts 
possessed by each person wh6 touches on them." 
The letter is signed by the Prime Minister's secretary. 



SPORT 197 

Lord Rosebery is one of the most accomplished Eng- 
lishmen of the day. He considers it lacking in Chris- 
tian charity to abuse him for owning and breeding a 
great race-horse. So do probably more than nine out 
of ten of his countrymen. From top to bottom of 
English society, from the Prime Minister to the York- 
shire foot-baller, sport is almost as much a part of 
national existence as eating and drinking. 

Harvard University, not many years ago, con- 
ferred the honorary degree of Master of Arts upon 
a young Englishman, who devotes a good deal of 
his time to studying and furthering the interest in 
wholesome sport. It was Mr. Lehman, a graduate 
of Cambridge University, England, who received this 
distinguished mark of his acceptability to the powers 
that be at Harvard, and this in spite of the fact that 
the crews he coached were wofully beaten by Yale. 
He was recognized as typical of one very prominent 
feature of British civilization. And so he was. 

An accepted authority upon all matters of sport in 
pngland has compiled some figures as to the invest- 
ments and expenditures upon sport, by the forty odd 
millions of inhabitants of Great Britain. His esti- 
mates, when they have been criticised, have been 
criticised mainly because they were too low. 

His estimates are as follows: 



SPENT 
INVESTED ANNUALLY 



Fox-hunting $78,035,000 $43,790,000 

Shooting 20,335,000 40,640,000 

Fishing 2,750,000 2,945,000 

Racing 41,610,000 52,965,000 

Yachting 28,000,000 15,160,000 



98 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 



But even these sums are not the whole of the bud- 
get, for he adds: 



SPENT 
INVESTED ANNUALLY 



Coursing $2,600,000 $1,587,000 

Coaching 1,451,250 1,188,975 

Polo 435>ooo 552,500 

Golf, there are some seven hundred and fifty golf 
links in Great Britain, counts for $2,625,000 invested 
in laying out of links, building club-houses, purchase 
of clubs, bags, etc., etc., and $3,627,750 annual ex- 
penditures for labor, upkeep of club-houses, and for 
caddies, professionals, and other necessary expenses, 
including travelling. 

SPENT 
INVESTED ANNUALLY 

Rowing $1,420,000 $2,871,500 

Foot-ball and Cricket . . . 53,815,000 58,560,000 

These figures have not been seriously questioned, 
except to add to their totals, so that we may conclude 
that some $233,066,250 are invested permanently, 
and $223,887,725 spent annually for sport. There 
is, in short, an investment in sport of some five dol- 
lars and twenty-five cents for each man, woman, and 
child in the United Kingdom, and a slightly smaller 
sum spent each year for sport. When aggregate in- 
vestments and expenditures reach such figures as 
these, we may be sure that the people who tax them- 
selves thus heavily have, or believe they have, satis- 
fied themselves that there is a valuable equivalent of 
some kind that justifies the expenditure. 

The London County Council give in their report 
an analysis of the athletic games played during the 



SPORT 199 

past twelvemonth in parks and open spaces of Lon- 
don. The following table is of interest: 

PLACES GROUNDS GAMES 

GAMES TO PLAY PROVIDED PLAYID 

Bowls ....... 15 74 24,749 

Cricket 35 452 28,904 

Croquet 22 31 1,535 

Foot-ball 35 231 16,228 

Hockey 23 39 2,246 

Lacrosse 5 7 120 

Lawn Tennis 40 476 102,649 

Quoits 20 36 2,063 

Travel by train or motor anywhere in England and 
you see games being played — particularly if it be a 
Saturday — from one end of the country to the other. 
The open spaces of England seem to be given over to 
men and some women batting, kicking, or hitting a 
ball. The attendance at games on a Saturday is very 
large. Even in these days of distress in the ship- 
building and cotton industries, when the problem of 
the unemployed is a serious one, there is no lack of 
sixpences and shillings to gain entry to the foot-ball 
games. Even at the beginning of the foot-ball season 
the gate receipts show an attendance of more than 
200,000 people. When the big and final games take 
place, I have calculated that out of the male adult 
population of England and Wales on a great foot-ball 
Saturday one in every twenty-seven is in attendance 
at a game of some sort, and this leans to the error of 
being too few rather than too many. 

The domestic exports of the United Kingdom in 
1905 were slightly over thirty-eight dollars per head, 
while the expenditure and investment for sport are 



200 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

about ten dollars per head, or a little more than one- 
fourth as much. Excluding troops and expenditure 
on troops serving outside the United Kingdom, Eng- 
land spent only the paltry sum of $75,000,000 on her 
army in 1907, and the cost of her naval armament in 
the same year was only $167,500,000, both together 
considerably less than was spent for sport. The 
capital value of the sporting rents advertised by a 
single firm of land agents one season not long ago, 
reckoning the letting value at four per cent, amounted 
to $43,750,000. The licenses to kill game bring in a 
revenue to the State of something over $925,000 per 
annum. 

In a territory of some 19,000,000 acres in Scotland, 
3,481,00c acres are preserved and devoted to deer 
forests alone. 

It is not to be wondered at then that England has 
been described by one of her more irascible sons, who 
was probably not interested in sport, as: "The para- 
dise of the rich, the purgatory of the poor, and the 
hell of the wise." 

We are not convinced that the writer of this de- 
scription is right. The bookish man is probably 
disheartened by the size of the sport budget of his 
country, and by the enormous amount of time and 
energy thus expended. On the other hand, when we 
examine the results, and gather together the threads 
of what Englishmen have accomplished all over the 
world, nobody but a blind man can conceal from 
himself that certain virile qualities of character have 
thus far in the world's progress dominated the more 
intellectual and philosophical traits. 



SPORT 201 

Not only are muscles and sinews strengthened and 
hardened, but the temper and the will are trained as 
well. The man who learns to spar, for example, not 
only schools his eye and his hands and his feet to re- 
spond quickly when called upon, but he learns also, 
and what is far more important, to keep his temper 
under control, and to take a pounding cheerfully; and 
if a man can translate these lessons to serve in the 
larger affairs of life, where temper is often tempted, 
and where poundings are meted out to all of us with 
even impartiality, he has learned a valuable lesson. 
As Stevenson puts it: "Our business in this world is 
not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits." 

Every sport has the valuable effect of diverting both 
mind and body. A sharp gallop, a round of golf, a 
week's yachting, a day's shooting or fishing, changes 
the current of one's thoughts, and rests the mind as 
well as the body. All the benefits to be had from 
sport group themselves under these two heads, of 
training and diversion. The lad at his rowing, his 
k)ot-ball, his cricket, or his tennis, needs the training 
more than the diversion; while his father, riding, 
shooting, golfing, or yachting, needs the diversion 
more than the training. 

The first settlers in America, indeed all the inhabi- 
tants thereof, until very recently, needed no sports 
for their training or their diversion. Building roads, 
and bridges, and houses, and railroads, and canals, 
and defending the same from their savage neighbors, 
were enough. Civilization in those rough years was 
hard training enough, and every citizen was obliged 
to play the game whether he liked it or not. But in- 



202 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

creased prosperity, and, above all, steam and elec- 
tricity, not only in America but in Europe, have done 
away with the necessity for constant physical exercise, 
or for daily deeds of daring. The best of mankind, 
however, know intuitively that luxury is the most in- 
sidious of all foes. If we are no longer obliged to 
ride, or to walk, in order to see our friends or to at- 
tend to our business, then we turn to and make a busi- 
ness of riding, walking, shooting, fishing, climbing 
mountains and hunting wild game, in order to keep 
alive in us the hardier virtues, which, in the beginning, 
made our forefathers capable of winning a place for 
us in the world. As the necessity for self-defence and 
great exertion to provide food lessen, field sports be- 
come more popular. 

It is often said as an objection to this argument that 
a man can learn self-control and show high courage 
just as well by doing his duty, whatever and w^here- 
ever it happens to be. It is not necessary that we 
should have wars, or rough games, like foot-ball or 
polo, to steady the nerves of men, to give them cour- 
age, and to teach them to take care of themselves. 
The controversies and temptations and hard tasks 
of daily life are enough. This is true in a way. 
Taking care of a peevish child who is ill is a tremen- 
dous test of patience and gentleness. Bearing the 
frowns of fortune with cheerfulness and in silence 
shows courage. Keeping one's self well in hand 
through the various worries of daily life, in business, 
profession, or in the home, is a constant schooling of 
the nerves. Riding a horse over a ^ve-barred gate, 
or across a water- jump, is a test of horsemanship- 



SPORT 203 

but before these can be successfully negotiated it is 
necessary to have some training at simpler feats of 
riding. It is the same with these other matters. 
He who has learned self-control, fair play, and good 
temper at his games, finds it easier to exercise these 
same high quaHties in the more complicated emer- 
gencies of daily life. There is a German proverb 
which runs: "When the devil cannot go himself he 
sends an old woman." There is just enough truth 
in the old woman argument against rough games and 
sports to lead one to believe that the devil sends it.. 
The nation which presides over the destinies of one- 
fifth of the inhabitants of the globe spends over two 
hundred millions annually for sport, and has invested 
something more than that besides. 

Perhaps there is no severer test of a man's all- 
round abilities than his power to govern wisely; at 
any rate the governing races of to-day are races of 
sportsmen. The peoples who are inheriting the earth 
to-day are the peoples who play games, perhaps 
because their contests make them meek! France, 
with her violent attempts in the last hundred years 
to reduce all Hfe to a philosophical system, has a de- 
creasing birth-rate, and has become of second-rate 
importance as a world power. In fact, every fresh 
compilation of statistics helps to show that this de- 
clining birth-rate is not a passing phase. The latest 
figures available for Paris, those of 1907, show that an 
actual shrinkage of the population is a fact. In spite 
of the fact that the marriage rate has been on an as- 
cending scale for the last twenty-five years, and that 
the death-rate has had, on the whole, a tendency to 



204 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

lower, the population does not increase. Last year 
there were 50,811 births against 50,499 deaths, a 
margin of only 312 to the good. But even this is not 
accurate, since some 30 per cent of the babies born 
in Paris are sent away to the country to be nursed. 
Their births appear in the Paris registers, but if they 
die in infancy, their deaths are recorded in the pro- 
vincial commune where the death takes place. Thus 
Paris escapes having to record nearly one-third of the 
infant mortaHty which might reasonably be expected 
in the city's death roll. Whether it be the lack of the 
sporting instinct or not, there is no gainsaying this 
proof of lack of breeding power. And when it is 
added that only recently France was obliged to dis- 
miss her Secretary of Foreign Affairs, at the demand 
of the German Emperor, her situation as a world 
power becomes pathetically inferior. 

The traveller in Spain sees that the salient charac- 
teristics of the race are overweening personal pride, 
untrustworthiness and cruelty. The sordid stealing 
on all sides by Russians during the war with Japan 
needs no repetition here. The Chinese despise 
unnecessary physical exercise, and can scarcely be 
driven to fight, and they are no more capable of de- 
fending their country than an enormous cheese to 
prevent itself being eaten. On the other hand, Japan 
is a nation of athletes whose prowess has only lately 
been discove^red, and they are the more dangerous ac- 
cordingly. Indeed, it is an open question whether 
England's hypocritical and short-sightedly selfish alli- 
ance with these varnished savages has not done more 
to menace Saxon civilization, both in Europe and in 



SPORT 205 

America, than any diplomatic step that has been 
taken for centuries. 

We have seen something of the origins of the Eng- 
lish race in another chapter, and we have seen, too, 
something of their almost universal desire to be let 
alone, and to be governed only up to that point where 
individual freedom is least interfered with. Their 
love of the land, and their out-door Hfe, have pre- 
vailed through all the centuries since they became 
possessed of what is now Great Britain. 

There is a rational philosophy back of this interest 
in sport. Only a race of strong men, fighting men, 
can keep themselves free from enemies abroad and 
enemies at home, as they have done, and conquer the 
world to boot. Sport is merely artificial work, arti- 
ficial adventure, artificial colonizing, artificial war. 
It is shooting at a mark because there are no enemies 
to shoot at; it is keeping the muscles hard and the 
nerves steady, and the head, heart and body under 
control, by a subterfuge, now that the real necessity 
has passed. And though there are, perhaps, higher 
and better tests of patience and self-control and cour- 
age than are required at foot-ball, hunting, or golf, 
there is certainly no better preparation to bear those 
tests than the schooling one gets by playing these 
games. 

There is, of course, another side to this question, 
that no one can afford to overlook. There is a 
marked difference between a game played for training 
or diversion and a game played as a business and for 
a salary. That is no longer sport but business, and 
there is nothing more degrading than to give all one's 



2o6 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

time and energy to the lighter, or to the physical, side 
of life. That is not training or diversion, but merely 
a debauchery of brutality. Society is good, sport is 
good, novel-reading is good as a diversion or a rest 
from more serious matters, but any one of them taken 
up as a business, as a vocation, makes but a sad return 
to its devotee. Sport as a profession, I quite agree, 
breeds more bullies, boasters and tricksters than any- 
thing else I can name. 

Sport, too, even in the hands of amateurs, may pro- 
duce these same vulgar qualities. England has suf- 
fered severely along these Hnes, because here sport 
has so many more participants. The gentleman 
sharpers, welshers, and blacklegs at racing, pigeon- 
shooting, and cards are too largely recruited from the 
English. Only within the last few years a turf scan- 
dal, involving two gentlemen of high rank and an- 
other of no rank, either socially or morally, disclosed 
a degree of infamous chicanery unworthy of a Chi- 
nese gambling hell. Race-horses have been poisoned, 
pigeon-shots have sold themselves to the book-makers, 
and so on. This indeed is the grave danger to sport 
among a people whose tastes are predominantly phys- 
ical. An hundred years ago you might have seen 
in a certain English village the village idiot taken out 
on fair days, and chained to a stake on the village 
green, that he might have an airing, there, in aK 
probability, to be teased by the local loafers. A 
subscription for Tom Sayers, the prize-fighter, was 
headed by Lord Palmerston, and subscribed to by 
most of the members of the House of Commons of 
the day. Prize-lighting, cock-fighting, bull-and-bear- 



SPORT 207 

bajting, rat-hunting, dog-fighting, figl^i between 
men and dogs, and the like, were favorite pastimes 
not only of the masses, but also of the gentry not 
an hundred years ago. 

The great Prime Minister of the early days of 
Queen Victoria, Lord Melbourne, remarked that he 
liked the Order of the Garter, because "there is no 
damned merit connected with it!" 

There are people in the world who are of a very 
coarse-grained moral fibre, of a very animal make- 
up, people who do not realize that it was not the 
absence of costume, but the presence of innocence, 
which made the happiness of the Garden of Eden. 
A disproportionate number of these people are in- 
habitants of the British Isles. There are many for- 
tunate results due to their predominating animal char- 
acteristics, but there are also disagreeable features of 
that same temperament, that even the most friendly 
critic may not overlook. The intense love of sport is 
founded upon this virile temperament, which must, 
of course, have its bad side. Fortunately for them 
they have been the nation who have undertaken, and, 
be it said, accomplished, some of the greatest feats 
of conquering and governing that the world has 
known. These adventures over-seas, and their un- 
tiring devotion to sport at home, have subdued and 
kept within bounds the animal side of them, though 
it has and does still crop out at times in evil practices. 

A people of this type, somewhat indifferent to in- 
tellectual interests of any kind, are almost driven to 
exercise in some form, and their climate is a still 
further incentive. 



2o8 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

Possibl" the greatest foe to an orderly and useful 
life is monotony. The human mind and the human 
body wear out easily if they are subjected day in and 
day out to a steady repetition of the same thing. The 
brain worker must change from his mathematics to 
a novel, or from history to the study of a new lan- 
guage, or he finds his mind getting rusty. The man 
who goes from house to office and back again, seeing 
the same faces, doing the same duties, conning over 
the same figures; or the teacher going over and over 
again the same tasks; or the judge hearing every day 
the same round of quarrels, definitions and criticisms, 
grows restless and tired. No one of these may recog- 
nize that monotony is at the bottom of his troubles, but 
the drip, drip, drip wears the stone away. Drink, 
dissipation, wickedness of various kinds are put down 
to various causes — to disappointment, to failure, to 
lack of self-control — but in reality, back of all these 
is monotony. These failures and shipwrecks could 
not stand the deadly strain of such a Hfe, and did not 
realize that change was the medicine they needed. 
For the great mass of men, to go away, to travel, to 
change the whole environment of Hfe, is impossible. 
Just here is where sport comes in, in our artificial 
civiHzation, to help us out. In Great Britain, for 
example, there are some thirty thousand cricket and 
foot-ball clubs alone, the members of which come 
from all classes of society. Hands from the factories, 
clerks in small shops, tradespeople, and the lesser 
professional men, all take a hand. All through the 
English provinces there are no distinctions of class 
at their games. 



SPORT 209 

This rather heavy, muscular people keep their 
health, and their heads, and their happiness, by this 
almost universal participation in some form of sport. 
It is their way of letting off steam, which every in- 
dividual and every nation must have for safety's 
sake, in some form or other. If one computed 
the amount of wealth and territory brought to 
acknowledge the British flag by travellers, ex- 
plorers, sportsmen, by adventurous botanists, fish- 
ermen and the like, the two hundred odd millions 
spent for sport annually would seem a small sum 
indeed. 

Newspapers of the most conservative bias devote 
columns every morning to the doings of the sports- 
men. Cricket, foot-ball, racing, hunting, in all their 
details, are chronicled and discussed, and advertised, 
with the same seriousness as are speeches in Parlia- 
ment, dispatches from the seat of war, and interna- 
tional diplomatic affairs. Such races as the Derby, 
the Oaks, the Grand National, are the theme of long 
newspaper articles months and months before they 
take place; and the betting odds against this and 
that horse are published each morning six months 
or more before he is to run, as regularly as the stock- 
market quotations. 

If the King's horse or the Prime Minister's horse 
wins the Derby, or any one of the great classic races, 
the owner, as he leads the horse back to the paddock, 
is received with tumultuous cheering. This is true 
of any owner fortunate enough to win such a race, 
but for the King, or a popular statesman, the ovation 
is almost frenzied. There, at any rate, the whole 



210 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

population is unanimous to a man, a good sportsman 
is universally popular. 

Prowess at any sport is counted upon as a telling 
factor in the availability of a candidate for office. A 
candidate for Parliamentary honors lets it be known 
as widely as possible that he is an old " Blue " of either 
Oxford or Cambridge; or that he has played for Eng- 
land at cricket or foot-ball, or won honors in some 
one or other of their many games, or been an ad- 
venturous traveller, or a great hunter or fisherman. 
These things help his candidacy, if not more, quite 
as much, as any qualities of intellect, unless he be a 
statesman who has already won his spurs. 

The stranger, whether American or other foreigner, 
is at a loss to understand much of the workings of the 
political and social life of England until he has be- 
come thoroughly imbued with the idea that sport is 
a much more serious and much more widely distrib- 
uted interest here than anywhere else in the world. 
In England, some form of sport is either the reminis- 
cence or the avocation of practically every man who 
has been, or is, physically capable of playing a game 
or taking part in some form of field sports. 

It is the only country in the world which supports 
not only a number of weekly and monthly periodicals 
devoted to sport, but also two, if not more, daily jour- 
nals exclusively given over to the chronicling of racing 
and game-playing. The Sportsman is a recognized 
and well-edited daily paper, to be found at every club 
and in many houses. The betting odds, present and 
prospective, the official starting prices, appear daily, 
as well as columns of news dealing with the exercise 



SPORT 211 

from day to day and the comparative merits of aU 
horses in training. 

The King breeds and races horses, and is the con- 
spicuous and, be it said, a long way the most popular, 
person present at all the great race meetings. The 
Prince of Wales is one of the half-dozen best shots in 
England, and I am not far wrong in saying that his 
prowess as a shot does more to endear him to Eng- 
lishmen than any other ability he may have. The 
Speaker of the House of Commons fences, and shoots, 
and rides to hounds. Lord Brassey is a yachtsman 
of reputation, who has devoted himself to the service 
of the navy as an editor, and has ruled a distant col- 
ony with distinction. Lord Onslow is an authority 
on harness horses, and a big-game shooter of long 
experience, as well as a valuable servant of the State; 
and so one might go on with an interminable list of 
distinguished Englishmen who are as well known for 
their prowess at some form of sport as for their abil- 
ity, uprightness and self-sacrifice as political servants 
of their country. 

The very speech of the Englishman savors of sport. 
"He did it off his own bat." "He put his money on 
the wrong horse." " This is a painful game." " Let 
us," or "we had better change the bowling." "I 
don't think he can go the distance." "It is an odds 
on chance," or about anything the Englishman is apt 
to express his feelings in the words of the book-maker 
and say: " Oh, I should call it a three to one," or "a 
five to one," or "a six to four chance." "It isn't 
cricket," or "it isn't playing the game" refers to any 
underhand or not quite straight conduct. These and 



212 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

countless other expressions serve to express distinc* 
tions and differences even of a subtle kind. If you 
have hunted in Ireland for a winter you come away 
convinced that most of the stock phrases in conversa- 
tion are invented by the horses themselves. The 
universal use of "fit" to express one's condition, and 
of " feed" for eat, are constant reminders of that habi- 
tation, dearest of all to the hearts of so many English- 
men, the stable. 

I have never forgotten the slovenly grooms, the 
staring coats of the horses, the bad smells, and the 
generally unkempt appearance of the stables of the 
King of Spain in Madrid. They spoil their children 
in the Latin countries and neglect their horses; while 
in England the stables are in many cases better and 
more comfortably furnished than the nurseries. As 
a result, both the EngHsh children and the English 
horses are superior! There is a kindness which is 
cruel and a harshness which is kind. This nation of 
sportsmen make this subtle distinction unerringly. 
Why? one asks. They are not philosophers. No. 
They think little of the intricacies and niceties of liv- 
ing, and discuss such matters even less. It is God's 
air, and life on the land, and wholesome bodies which 
guide them aright in such matters. It is only of late, 
when the population is shifting from the land to the 
towns, that they seem to be losing the sterling qualities 
that are their heritage. They are the last race of all 
to be fuddled and disturbed by new religions, nev/ 
theories of government, new solutions of the problem 
of existence; in short, that effervescence of semi-ed- 
ucation which is posing as the interpreter of God 



SPORT 213 

and man all over the democratic world. We in 
America are so much older, so much more weary 
than they are, and it is with some regret that one 
sees nowadays that England and the English are 
not as boyish as they were. The greatest Englishman 
of letters now living, Rudyard Kipling, writes of 

"The flannelled fools at the wickets. 
The muddied oafs at the goals." 

He is much too sure an interpreter of all things Eng- 
lish to mean that quite as it stands. His writing is 
the incarnation in words of ever youthful England. 
Like other wise men, he is incensed sometimes that 
his countrymen play so much. If I were an English- 
man I should pray God that my countrymen might 
never play less so long as they played the game. It 
is the men in the closets, not the men in the fields and 
on the seas, who breed sorrow, suspicion and envy; 
and the Englishman is not so dull as it might appear 
when he pins his faith to the out-door man. He 
is not far wrong in his belief that : Ceux qui manquent 
de prohite dans les plaisirs n^en ont qu^unefeinte dans 
les ajD'aires. 

EngHshmen look upon sport as a part of character, 
as well as a physical developing factor in civilization; 
while the interest of the majority of Americans is 
confined to the excitement expected from a contest. 
Many Americans look upon the international yacht- 
ing and other contests almost as though they were 
serious battles, and are elated or depressed accord- 
ingly; while the EngHsh take these matters much 



214 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

more calmly, and, while eager to win, welcome these 
contests as being good for the sports and games them- 
selves, and bear always in mind that the genuine 
sportsman: 

"Sets his heart upon the goal, 
Not upon the prize." 

Let me put it even more clearly by saying that the 
proportion of the spectators at Lord's on the days of 
the university or pubHc school cricket matches, who 
have themselves played the game, is very much larger 
than the proportion of spectators present at a base- 
ball or foot-ball game between Harvard and Yale. 
Or again, out of the Eton and Harrow ''elevens," the 
fathers of twenty, and possibly the grandfathers of 
fifteen, of the boy players, have themselves been 
cricketers — some of them even of sufficient prowess 
to be on their school eleven. Of the last year's Har- 
vard and Yale base-ball and foot-ball teams and 
'varsity eights, not one of the players had a father and 
grandfather who had both distinguished themselves 
along those lines, and there were, with two noticeable 
exceptions that I recall, almost none whose fathers, 
even, had been expert at these games. 

Though we Americans believe, or pretend to be- 
lieve, with Cicero, that every man begins his own 
ancestry, one is forced to admit that a game with a 
long ancestry of tradition will differ in all probability 
from a game with little or none. It must be admitted, 
too, that a boy whose father and grandfather, whose 
uncles and brothers, all play some game, or take an 



SPORT 215 

interest in some form of sport, will grow up to look at 
the question very di£ferently from one whose relatives 
take little or no serious interest in any game. Eng- 
lishmen practically never realize that sport lacks en- 
tirely this atmosphere of almost sacred tradition in 
America, while, on the other hand, few Americans 
understand the very serious and unassailable position 
of sport in England. 

It is only two centuries and a half ago that the 
settlers of New England ran away from sport in Eng- 
land, to found a commonwealth where one of the 
names for the devil was diversion and another amuse- 
ment. It was said of these people, the Puritans, that 
they believed hell to be a place where every one 
must mind his own business. At a time when Eng- 
lish parsons and school-masters were some of them 
playing cricket on Sunday afternoons, and others of 
them hunting two or three days a week in the season, 
their representatives in America, who should have 
attempted to imitate such enjoyments, would have 
been ridden out of their parishes on rails, or confined 
in a mad-house. In America to-day it would be dif- 
ficult to find a clergyman over sixty years of age who 
had been a distinguished athlete in his college days; 
in England even the stranger can count such by the 
score. 

This ancestry of sport marks the difference in the 
way we Americans look at sport, and it also marks the 
very great difference in the auspices under which we 
practise it. In America boys play with boys almost 
exclusively; even a professional coach for the crew, 
or the ball nine, is a source of much discussion and 



2i6 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

dissension. English schools have not one, but several, 
professionals, and what is most important of all, Eng- 
lish boys play their games, a good part of the time at 
least, with men. Old Carthusians, old Etonians, 
old Wykehamists, go back to play their school eleven, 
or their school foot-ball team; old university men 
play the youngsters; country gentlemen have house 
parties of cricketers and polo players; and the writer 
had the. pleasure to play against a team, at a certain 
country house, where the host of fifty kept wicket, 
and captained an eleven, no member of which was 
under thirty-five; and it is with mingled feelings of 
pleasure and pain that he recalls that they won. 
This fact alone, of the participation of the adult and 
middle-aged element so generally in English sport, 
accounts for the wide difference in the way in which 
sport is regarded and the way in which games are 
played. Where boys and youths are accustomed to 
play their games, cricket more particularly, with 
grown men, it introduces an element of sobriety, 
courtesy and reticence in their play and behavior, 
which are lacking to some extent among boys and 
youths who play exclusively among themselves. 
Games played in such auspicious surroundings as- 
sume their relative place and receive their proper 
value, for men do not feel defeat so keenly, nor do 
they look upon such victories as the greatest of all 
achievements. Men play for the game's sake, while 
boys are apt to play exclusively to win. In England 
games and sports receive their status and character 
from men; in America it is the boys who give our 
games their status and character. 



SPORT 217 

In England, as a result of this, there is a very large 
and mature public, thoroughly conversant with the 
rules, precedents, and traditions of their games and 
sports; and the EngHsh press following this lead, 
differs from the American press in its comments, 
crticisms, and descriptions in much the same degree 
that the English players differ from the American 
players; that is, in their sobriety, courtesy and 
reticence. 

All good Americans were at one in condemning 
the blatant and puerile excuses and accusations of 
a portion — happily, a small and easily recognized 
portion — of the American press, in regard to the 
defeat of the Cornell crew at Henley a few years 
ago. And when there were added to this letters to 
the newspapers from trainer, and parents, and the 
boys themselves, the condemnation became disgust. 
Americans could not help feeling, about these under- 
bred and unsportsmanlike people, as one would feel 
should his own son go to visit at a friend's house, and 
behave like a vicious stable-boy, and thus throw dis- 
credit upon his home. Here was a most unhappy 
example of the result of leaving the whole domain of 
sports and pastimes quite too much in the hands of 
professionals and undeveloped boys. On the other 
hand, the visit of a Harvard crew to England two 
years ago, to row against Cambridge, made every 
American proud that he was so well represented, and 
marked the great stride that the genuine sportsmen 
has made in America. They were good sportsmen, 
good fellows, and gentlemen, and it was worth while 
to have them come three thousand miles and suffer 



2i8 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

defeat, if only to show the Britisher something first 
rate of our own breeding. 

It is true that, to some extent in these latter days, 
the college contests and their arrangements have had 
the great advantage of the superintendence of an ad- 
visory board of college officials, and college gradu- 
ates, but even then one must realize the difference be- 
tween advice from the outside, and the more forcible 
influence of example by actual participation in the 
games themselves, by older men. It is just therein 
that the English games and players have an advantage 
over our own. The masters at the pubHc schools in 
England play with the boys every day; during their 
holidays, these same boys play with their elder 
brothers, with their fathers and their fathers' friends, 
and I recall one instance of a grandfather who plays 
cricket with his sons and grandsons, and no doubt 
there are many more. Only the other day a certain 
family composed of grandfather, father, sons, and 
one daughter, challenged their local golf club to a 
match of eight a side, and won. In America, with 
the exception of a few of our boys' boarding-schools, 
modelled somewhat upon the lines of the English 
public schools, there is almost no active participation 
in the boys' games by older men. 

The results of this difference between the English 
and American method are many and manifold. Sel- 
dom a year passes with us but there is friction, dis- 
cussion, and even displays of puerile bad temper 
about the arrangements for, and the carrying out of, 
our intercollegiate games. Harvard will not play 
Yale at foot-ball; or Princeton declines to play Har- 



SPORT 219 

vard at base-ball; the smaller colleges grumble at the 
arrangements made by the larger colleges, and they 
quarrel among themselves to boot. What men can 
fairly represent the college, and what men cannot; 
whether this man or that has been bribed by having 
his expenses paid at this or the other college merely 
that he may be eligible to play on the base-ball or 
foot-ball team or row on the crew; which teams shall 
play on a given date, when most gate-money is ex- 
pected; these and many other matters of a most un- 
sportsmanlike character come up for acrimonious 
discussion, which ought not to arise between gen- 
tlemen at all. 

The games themselves are played during the ex- 
citing and decisive moments, amid a yelling, howling, 
and cheering, backed up by a brass hand, that would 
do credit to an Omaha dance among Sioux Indians. 
Worst of all, this pandemonium is methodically let 
loose under the direction of certain leaders, at a time 
when it is intended that it shall seriously disconcert 
opponents. Decisions of the umpire, if they are in 
the least doubtful, are received with jeers and howls, 
and the players themselves express their dissatisfac- 
tion, by grimaces and gesticulation, which would be 
unbecoming and punishable in infants deprived of 
their toys. It is true that it was some score of years 
ago, and possibly would not happen now, but the 
writer playing foot-ball against one of our promi- 
nent universities, on their own ground, was with 
the rest of the team hooted at, jeered, and almost 
interfered with during the game by the members 
of the university whose present supremacy at the 



220 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

game in question makes such behavior unneces 
sary. 

One may say that such behavior is never, certainly 
rarely, seen among amateurs in England. Fathers 
would be ashamed of their sons; schools and univer- 
sities would lose not only caste, but revenue and repu- 
tation, if such things happened, and the head-masters 
and masters would root out such evils at any cost. 
If the playing of games resulted in this veritable de- 
lirium of excitement, they would no more permit it 
than they would countenance the taking of dangerous 
stimulants by the boys. They would consider the 
two on the same plane of harmfulness. 

One must add, in this connection, that games as 
played in America are not more difficult, nor are the 
points to be decided nicer, than in English games. 
An illustration of how we in America try to obviate 
all possible causes for dispute is found in the fact that 
the batter is not out now, if he is caught off the bat 
by the catcher, at our game of base-ball. It was dif- 
ficult to decide whether it was the snap of the catcher's 
gloves, or some like-sounding noise, or the actual 
contact of the swift ball and the bat; hence the 
change. But at cricket there is even a more subtle 
point still left to the judgment of the umpire. In- 
deed, this latter is worthy of emphasis because it 
stands quite alone, I believe, as being the only ques- 
tion, not of fact but of hypothesis, left to the decision 
of an umpire in any game now played. The point 
in question is known to cricketers as ''leg-before- 
wicket." Here the umpire is called upon to decide 
whether a ball pitched at a certain spot in a straight 



SPORT 221 

line between wicket and wicket, would have hit the 
wicket, if the batsman's leg had not been in front 
of the wicket at the time. It is a very nice ques- 
tion of eye and judgment at the best of times. In 
scores of games of cricket, at which the writer has 
been either spectator or participant, he has seen many 
men given out "leg-before," men from all classes of 
society, from the member of his university eleven 
down to the butcher's boy on his village eleven; but 
in no single case has he seen the player make a gest- 
ure or open his lips to question the decision of the 
umpire, or to make a comment. Granted that one is 
even a prejudiced American, one may well question 
whether so very delicate a decision as this would pass 
unchallenged, by both players and spectators, in a 
match between two American colleges, upon which 
great hopes were placed — and probably some dollars. 
It is fair to say in this connection that our spectators 
are largely at fault in this matter. To the uninitiated 
the prime, not to say the sole, interest of a game is, 
who wins. Our spectators are despondent, or elated, 
according as their favorites win or lose. All the ac- 
cessories and fine features of a well-contested game are 
swamped for the majority by this one all-embracing 
interest. They appreciate little else because they un- 
derstand little else, and they therefore put the emphasis 
much too strongly on the one feature of winning. An 
English audience is not only much less excitable, and 
much more experienced, but a technically educated 
audience, and the spectators get their enjoyment from 
a multitude of nice details, and therefore do not have 
the same baleful influence upon the players. 



222 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

In this matter of the influence of the spectators I 
must repeat, even at the risk of saying the same thing 
over and over again in these pages, that neither the 
English nor the Americans appreciate how much 
more democratic in these matters, as well as in many 
others, is England than America. Englishmen who 
know America only at the long range of theory can- 
not understand what seems like a contradiction; and 
Americans, who are mostly but birds of passage in 
England, do not recognize the truth of it. There 
cannot be the slightest doubt in the mind of the man 
who knows both countries, and who has played the 
games of both countries, that the Englishman is a 
far more democratic sportsman than the American. 
I mean by that definitely that all classes come far 
oftener in contact with one another, especially in the 
provinces, than with us, and are on more friendly 
and less awkward terms of good-fellowship. Trades- 
people, school-boys, the squire, the parson and the 
noble play together, interest themselves together, and 
get on together in the most wholesome fellowship 
at cricket, boating, hunting, and the like. Almost 
more than anything else this has made England so 
homogeneous a nation. 

This custom is an advantage in that thus a very 
large number of both players and spectators, of what- 
ever class, have not only seen but have participated 
in, games, with players playing for the love of the 
game and with a respect ior, and a courteous obedi- 
ence to, its best traditions. The butcher and the 
ironmonger would be as quick to see and reprehend 
such a trick, let us say, as knocking a man's bails 



SPORT 223 

off when he accidentally steps out of his ground, as 
the young gentleman from Eton. The rule is that 
a man may be thus put out for stepping out of his 
ground, but unless he persists in stealing ground, 
there is a higher, though unformulated, law, which 
says this advantage shall not be taken. In America, 
at base-ball, on the contrary, the habit of running 
inside of second and third base, thus shortening ma- 
terially the ground covered by the runner, became 
so frequent that now two umpires are employed, 
when, if the players could be trusted, only one is 
necessary. 

The large proportion of the general public in 
America who interest themselves in the playing of 
games labor under the overwhelming disadvantage 
of seeing only our game of base-ball, and that played 
by paid professionals who are managed by stock 
companies, whose sole desire is to make money out 
of an exhibition of ball-playing. Nothing could be 
worse. These players are not, as the stranger might 
gather from the names of the clubs, as the Chicago, 
the New York, the Boston, the Washington Club, 
men from those particular cities. On the contrary, 
there is a regular traffic in players by the managers 
of the clubs, without the least attention to what part 
of the country they hail from. They play purely 
and simply for their salaries, with no more sectional 
loyalty than a race-horse which runs to-day for one 
owner and to-morrow for another. As their living 
depends upon their success at the game, one can 
readily understand their attitude toward the umpire, 
toward one another, and toward the game. They 



224 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

care no more for the best traditions of the game, or 
for a sportsmanHke attitude in their play, than a ter- 
rier hunting rats. Nothing could be more debilitat- 
ing to the morale of sport than the state of things as 
above described. It is true that cricket in England 
includes many professionals, but no county eleven is 
without its contingent of gentlemen players, one of 
whom is always the captain, and the standard of be- 
havior demanded of, and acquiesced in by, both 
players and spectators, is very high. A row on a 
base-ball field is not uncommon, and a graduated 
scale of fines, to be inflicted upon players by the um- 
pire, is a necessary weapon of defence in his hands, 
against insult and even assault; while a disturbance 
at a cricket match is practically unheard of. Foot- 
ball in England, played by professionals and attended 
by vast crowds, suffers much as our base-ball, and 
rows and assaults are not uncommon. 

I have gone at some length into this matter because 
the American in the West, Southwest, and South, in- 
deed the American, generally, has little interest in 
sport; and the influential portions of these and prac- 
tically all communities, except in Massachusetts and 
the neighborhood of New York, where the college 
graduate is beginning to make his influence felt, 
cannot from any similar experience of their own, in 
the least realize what a predominating factor sport 
is, and has been, in this English civiHzation. The 
Duke of Wellington's dictum about Eton's effect 
upon Waterloo sounds in American ears hke an exag- 
gerated flattery of sport. As a matter of fact, it is a 
commonplace. There is not the smallest doubt but 



SPORT 225 

that the education, moral and physical, of these Eng- 
lishmen through sport, is one of the most saliently 
distinct features of their civilization. You can see 
it in their 'bus and cab-drivers in the management of 
their horses, and from thence all the way up to their 
management of the large variety of races they control 
in their colonies. What you see at Lord's you can see 
in Egypt and in India. They play more than they 
pray, and they spend more upon sport every year 
than upon either education or religion. There is no 
false shame about it. On the contrary, there is 
enthusiastic and unabashed interest in all forms 
of sport, by practically the whole population, from 
highest to lowest. It is looked upon, in short, as 
part of the curriculum of education. One might 
search a long time to find an English cabinet, one or 
more of whose members was not an authority at rac- 
ing, or fishing, or hunting, or cricket, or rowing, and 
the like. The few who do not take an actual part, 
live surrounded by, and steeped in, this atmosphere. 
' As we have seen, they are not by origin or by 
temperament a pugnacious race. Their fighting is 
done generally to preserve the peace, to keep them- 
selves and the land in quiet, however selfish their aim 
may be. 

It is a far cry, perhaps, from playing to painting, 
but I never stroll through an English art gallery with- 
out noting the quiet, the homeliness, the innocence of 
the scenes their native artists choose for their studies. 
Fred. Walker, Dicksee, J. C. Hook, Luke Fildes, 
Wyllie, Constable, Poynter, Farquharson, Orchard- 
son, Millais, Holl, Frith, Watts, Linnell, and many 



226 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

others; go look at their work, whether a landscape 
or a study of a situation, like Fildes's pathetic paint- 
ing "The Doctor," for example, and see how simple, 
how quiet, how pathetic are the scenes that appeal to 
them. It was to these people first that landscape ap- 
pealed. There is no enthusiasm for mere land and 
sky, in Greek, or Roman, or Renascent art. It was 
born here, that particular love of the land, Hfted into 
poetry and painting, through the brush and pen of 
Englishmen. The animal virility, which will out, 
and which finds its vent else)fvhere in pohtical excite- 
ment, in pornographic literature, and suggestive art; 
which unsteadies and excites, and culminates here in 
Napoleon, there in Zola ; or here in a revolution, and 
there in a morbid philosophy, seems to be dissipated 
and calmed in this moist island, and to lose its fever- 
ishness among these hard-playing islanders. 

The bulk of their art leans to the mild type, as does 
their literature, and their statesmanship. The ef- 
fervescent poHtician or demagogue, whose denuncia- 
tions are suspicions, whose promises are dreams, and 
whose actual achievements are mere rhetorical prom- 
ises to pay, seldom makes much headway here, and 
rarely lasts long. The turbulent and spectacular 
journalism, common elsewhere, pecks at the hearts 
of public interest here largely in vain. Men of what- 
ever class cannot be coached to beHeve that noise and 
fury, personal attacks and impudence, are to be 
trusted, or that bombastic oratory means real busi- 
ness and level-headed leadership. 

The reader has quite mistaken the meaning of 
this chapter, however, if on reading it, he concludes 



SPORT 2271 

that the writer intended a eulogy of sport and game- 
playing, and in particular of English sports and 
games, and nothing else. This is not at all the ob- 
ject of the chapter. The intention is to emphasize, 
strongly, the very large, one might even say the dis- 
proportionately large, place they occupy in English 
life, and to show al^o that what good they do, and 
the comparatively Httle harm they do, are due entirely 
to the fact that they give in some sort a training for 
life, because, as a rule, they are conducted on sounder 
lines of fair play, sanity, and uprightness than any- 
where else in the world. 

It is not the business of this chapter to discuss the 
question as to whether a hard-drinking, hard-riding, 
game-playing, out-door-loving people will continue 
to hold their own against such rivals as America, Ger- 
many, and Japan. Personally, I beheve we stand at 
the parting of the ways, and that the student of Eng- 
land and the EngHsh is looking on to-day at the first 
indications of the decay of, in many respects, the 
greatest empire the world has ever seen. The sun 
that never sets is setting. Nothing but a tremendous, 
almost miraculous, wrench can turn our stout, red- 
cheeked, honest, sport-loving John Bull away from 
his habits of centuries, to compete with his virile body 
against the nervous intelligence of a scientific age. 
His game of settlement on the land, there to raise his 
crops, there to play, there to live in peace, there to 
expand himself till he occupies his present large pro- 
portion of it, he has played to perfection. But the 
nations are playing a new game now, and some of 
them seem to play it more brilliantly, and more sue- 



228 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

cessfully, than he does. Though one may praise, and 
praise honestly, the game he has played, and the 
manly way, upon the whole, he has played it, this 
need not interfere in the least with the conviction that 
he is being caught up with — which means, of course, 
ere long left behind — in the far more scientific game 
that Germany, Japan, and America are now playing. 

That pleasant physical fatigue which lulls the 
nerves to sleep, and which is one of the most benefi- 
cent effects of physical exercise, may be at work in 
this case, leaving Mr. Bull as confident as ever, and 
pleasantly unconscious of his own danger. That this 
worship of, and training of, the body by playing 
games seriously and taking sport seriously, has pro- 
vided them with a calmness, steadiness and fearless- 
ness of character all their own, no one can doubt. 
That these characteristics have made them ideal 
governors of inferior races, no one but perhaps a 
jealous German will deny; nor can it be denied, 
either, that it has kept the peace at home, leaving 
them unharmed and practically untouched by the 
class wars, and modern political philosophies, which 
have caused grave unrest among the masses of the 
people all over the world. 

England, at any rate, has kept in view the laud- 
able ambition to bring up her rich with the hardness 
and resourcefulness of the poor; while we in America 
have dropped into the vulgarity of bringing up our 
poor to be rich. Not a few of our social sorrows in 
America are being fostered by a widely advertised, 
though fortunately small, class, diligent in making 
themselves conspicuous, who, having been recently 



SPORT 229 

poor, are trying to appear anciently rich. At least 
there is no such thinly veiled hypocrisy, no such self- 
conscious social awkwardness in England. That, at 
any rate, is not their weakness. On the other hand, 
the easy unconsciousness, born of great physical 
vigor and great national success, is apparently con- 
soling them with a blind belief that theirs is the only 
type of manhood, theirs the only road to national 
health and prosperity. Alas, there are many indica- 
tions just now that, though this is a brave and com- 
fortable creed, it is not comprehensive enough. 



VII 

IRELAND 

TO write of England and the English without 
a chapter devoted to Ireland, would be to 
omit a phase of English social and poHtical 
history which throws much Hght upon the EngHsh 
character. There have been many things said and 
written about Ireland, sad, pathetic, insulting, vitu- 
perative, in praise and in blame. Not being either 
English or Irish, the present writer deals with the 
tangled and perplexed subject, not from choice, but 
from necessity. 

The English-Irish divorce case has been in the 
courts now for some seven hundred and fifty years, 
and is apparently no nearer a settlement to-day than 
at any date during those centuries. A vivacious, 
emotional, law-ignoring Celtic lady is united, not 
altogether of her own free will, to a rather dull, self- 
centred, law-worshipping Saxon, and their domestic 
troubles have been unceasing ever since. They have 
murdered their children; they have stolen one an- 
other's household effects; they have made love, and 
been made love to, by strangers; they have committed 
every offence known to the law; they have patched 
up a temporary peace, only to fight the more fiercely 
afterward; and they have called one another every 
name in the vituperative dictionary. It is the cause 

2^0 



IRELAND 231 

ceUhre in the annals of the divorce court .of the nations 
of the world. The robbing, plundering, snubbing, 
bribing and beating that have a part in their riotous 
and unlovely domestic life make a story unique and 
unparalleled in history. For seven hundred years 
and more this has gone on with the result that to-day, 
at the date of this writing, a prominent English 
statesman says that the condition of lawlessness in 
Ireland is "a scandal to civilization." England 
sighs with pity at the lawlessness in other lands; 
she dispatches missionaries over the world to bring 
l^e peace and charity of Anglican Christianity, and 
she often follows these with the sword, but her own 
spouse, Ireland, is as irreclaimable as lawless, as 
vindictive, as unloving as ever: 



"Wid charmin' pisintry upon a fruitful sod 
Fightin' like devils for conciliation, 
An' hatin' each other for the love of God.** 



This island, with its 32,531 square miles, with its 
present population of something over four millions, 
separated from England by a narrow strip of sea, 
was given to Henry the Second of England by Pope 
Hadrian the Fourth in 11 55. Nicholas Breakspeare 
was the only Englishman who ever occupied the papal 
chair. To show his affection for his native land, and 
perhaps also to bring this island more immediately 
under papal control, he presented it to Henry the Sec- 
ond. If ever a nation was presented with Pandora's 
box it was done then and there. 

History in this case for seven hundred and fifty 



232 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

years reads like romance, if not like rather vulgar 
melodrama. An Irish king, the King of Leinster, 
runs off with the wife of one of the Irish chieftains, 
there follow war and riot, and the King of Leinster, 
getting the worst of it, flees to England and appeals 
to Henry the Second for aid. Henry, seeing in this 
request an opportunity to take formal possession of 
the pope's gift, sends some of his nobles over with an 
army, and followed himself in 1171 with a still larger 
army, and, after much resistance and bloodshed, re- 
ceived the submission of most of the Irish kings. 
Then having given away nearly the whole of Ireland 
to his followers, he leaves a chief governor behind 
him, and returns to England. Then begins the long 
drama of opening, shutting, slamming down the lid, 
and sitting on the lid, of this Pandora's box. Prob- 
ably the seeds of the land league, of boycotting, of 
cattle driving, of obstruction in Parliament, were 
sown at that time, and the crops have been continu- 
ous and flourishing from then till this very day. 

The authentic history of Ireland may be said to 
begin when St. Patrick, taken as a slave from Ireland 
to Scotland, and then returning to Ireland after com- 
pleting his studies as a priest, converts Ireland to the 
Catholic faith early in the fifth century. The Danes 
overran Ireland, as they did England, in the eighth 
century, and the Irish fought many bloody battles 
with them; but it is not until Pope Hadrian the 
Fourth presents Henry the Second with Ireland that 
Anglo-Irish history begins, and that history is merely 
a series of quarrels, disputes and wranglings, punctu- 
ated with famine, plague and slaughter. 



IRELAND 233 

From this time on the Anglo-Norman barons and 
their descendants fought among themselves and 
fought the Irish. Through one reign after another 
the affairs of Ireland went from bad to worse. After 
the Wars of the Roses, when Henry the Seventh came 
to the throne in England in 1485, the English settle- 
ment in Ireland was found to be very much reduced 
m power and size. The first English settlers had 
married Irish women and had become more Irish 
than the Irish. Though this was forbidden and pun- 
ished by the severest, and even the most brutal, 
measures, it still went on. The Irish were not con- 
sidered to be even under the protection of the English 
law. To kill an Irishman was like killing a dog — 
nevertheless, while the English had been occupied 
with wars in Scotland, France, Wales, and among 
themselves, the Irish had recovered something of their 
power. They went so far as to receive, and to crown 
openly in Dublin, one of the pretenders to the crown 
of Henry the Seventh. Then was passed the famous, 
or infamous, Poynings's Act. Henry sent as his 
representative to Ireland Sir Edward Poynings, who 
summoned a parliament, and passed the act which 
goes by his name to the effect that: All EngHsh laws 
have force in Ireland, and the Irish Parliament must 
confine itself to measures first approved of in Eng- 
land. The EngHsh King and his council must be 
first informed of all bills to be brought forward in the 
Irish Parliament, and must give their consent. 

It was four hundred years from the first invasion 
of Ireland before Ireland was wholly subdued. As 
late as the time of Henry the Eighth, England only 



234 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

held possession of some of the seaport towns of Ire- 
land. King Henry the Eighth in his day assumed 
the title of King of Ireland, for as much as any other 
reason that he might not be supposed to have ac- 
cepted or inherited Ireland from a pope. Henry 
confiscated the church lands in Ireland, as he had 
done in England, and began to bring to bear that press- 
ure, which has been insistent ever since, to make the 
Irish give up the faith of St. Patrick for the novel 
Protestantism which Henry the Eighth had evolved 
from the necessities of his personal domestic situa- 
tion. Nearly all the chiefs in Ireland were brought 
to acknowledge Henry as the head of the church, 
but the people refused to do so then, and have re- 
fused to do so ever since. We now have clearly be- 
fore us the two matters that underlie almost all sub- 
sequent troubles. Their land had been taken from 
them, their rehgion was to be taken from them. 
Edward followed Henry, and was even more bitter 
in his Protestantism; then came Mary and a return 
to the old faith; and then Elizabeth, with years of 
religious and land wars. There were few years of 
her reign without war, bloodshed and rebellion in Ire- 
land. If the Irish could not be subdued and con- 
verted, there followed the plan of establishing planta- 
tions of English and Scotch in Ireland, who drove off 
the Irish and settled in their place. During these 
wars of the time of Elizabeth, crops, cattle and houses 
were destroyed purposely to bring about famine and 
thus destroy and drive away the people. Thousands 
of men, women and children perished of starvation. 
People were fined and imprisoned for not attending 



IRELAND 235 

Protestant worship, and nearly a million acres of land 
in the counties of Donegal, Derry, Tyrone, Armagh, 
Fermanagh and Cavan were turned over to settlers 
who promised to be Protestants. Large numbers of 
English and Scotch were thus settled by force, fraud, 
or cunning on the most fertile Irish land. In 1641, 
a general rising took place, known as the rebellion of 
1 641, followed by atrocious cruelties, murder and 
misdeeds unmentionable. In 1642 a national con- 
vention was called at Kilkenny — ominous name — 
to proclaim and establish the independence of Ire- 
land. This was aided in a half-hearted way, it is 
supposed, by Charles the First, then at loggerheads 
with his own Parliament at home. But a man of dif- 
ferent stamp from Charles then undertook the rule of 
Ireland, and probably for the first time since England 
came into possession of her Pandora's box the lid was 
firmly closed and locked. From the rebellion of 
1 641, till the final stamping out of all insurrection 
under Cromwell in 1652, out of a population of 
1,466,000, 616,000, or nearly half, perished by sword 
or famine, and the land was again turned over to 
Protestant settlers. 

Cromwell's solution of the problem was simply 
wholesale murder, to be followed by plantations of 
English and Scotch, who were to crowd out the Irish. 
They were driven to emigrate, sold as slaves or for 
worse purposes in the West Indies, and those who 
would not, or could not go, were segregated, and kept 
apart in the province of Connaught, and treated as 
were the Jews in Europe — driven like cattle into 
their pens and marked off from the rest of the popula- 



236 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

tion as though they were lepers. Of the horrors of 
this period of Irish history it is not easy to write with- 
out giving an effect of exaggeration, and this is to be 
avoided at all hazards, since these pages are written 
not to prejudice any one, or to please any one, but 
merely as one of the pigments necessary in painting 
our picture. It is not Irish history, but English his- 
tory. " Deeds of murder, rapine, plunder and devas- 
tation carried out so ruthlessly in Ireland, and the 
expatriation of so many miUions of the Irish race, 
must recoil on England's head," writes Corbet. 
"Such is the past of EngHsh government of Ireland: 
a tissue of brutality and hypocrisy scarcely surpassed 
in history," writes Lecky. "Such a combination of 
rapine, treachery and violence as would have dis- 
graced the name of government in the most arbitrary 
country in the world," writes Benjamin Franklin. 
"The legislative union between England and Ire- 
land," writes Gladstone, "was brought about by a 
combination of violence, fraud, baseness, tyranny 
and cruelty in a degree rarely if ever paralleled in his- 
tory." These are the comments of different men, 
of different opinions, at different times, and whatever 
may be the rights and wrongs of the bickerings of to- 
day, these are fairly typical of the estimate of practi- 
cally all fair-minded men. 

But the story is not told as yet. Cromwell's iron 
heel marks indelibly the end of one period and the 
beginning of another. The Restoration brought little 
comfort to Ireland. Whether Catholic or Protestant 
is in power seems to avail the Irish nothing. Under 
William of Orange a series of new penal laws were 



IRELAND 237 

imposed upon them, again with the intention of sup- 
pressing Catholicism. It may be added here that the 
natural hatred between the Anglo-Norman and the 
Celtic portions of the population, between 1172 and 
1540, only added to and made fiercer the quarrel be- 
tween them when Henry the Eighth's religious re- 
forms were made. The English naturally followed 
the changes made in England; while the Irish held 
all the more tenaciously to papal supremacy, which, 
as a sequence, became, and remains to-day, a S3rn- 
onym for hostility to England. Romanism and na- 
tionalism became close allies in Ireland for a series 
of reasons which even this short outHne of Irish his- 
tory makes clear. The Irish Parliament was barred 
to Catholics, as were the law and the church, and 
practically all positions of trust and emolument, while 
under Anne and George the First, the rights of the 
Irish Parhament were still further mutilated. 

The Protestant Parhament of 169 5-1 709 passed a 
series of penal laws against Catholics which for well- 
nigh two centuries kept the land in a turmoil of 
suspicion, denunciation and sycophancy. "The law 
does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish 
Roman Catholic," said a certain Lord Chancellor. 
An Irish CathoHc might not act as a teacher under 
pain of banishment, and under pain of death if he re- 
turned from banishment. Their children could be 
educated only by Protestants. They could not hold 
property in land or take land on lease for a longer 
term than thirty years. They were forbidden to 
carry arms. They could not act as guardians of their 
own children, or marry a Protestant wife, or inherit an 



238 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

estate from a Protestant relative. The law of primo- 
geniture was abrogated in the case of a Catholic so 
that his property might the more easily be distributed. 
These drastic measures against a religion served also 
as an opportunity for the Protestant to possess him- 
self of the land and wealth he coveted. Here as ever, 
no doubt, the Englishman found his duty trotting 
amiably and conveniently in double harness with his 
selfish interests. 

One notes these things not because they are dis- 
agreeable, but because they throw light upon both 
the English and the Irish character. The imperturb- 
able self-sufficiency of the English probably inter- 
preted these doings and this legislation as a duty that 
they were called upon to perform. Its effect upon 
the Irish was to make them slaves with the vices of 
slaves. They grew in jealousy, in malice, and in 
feline methods of defence, of treachery and trickery. 
The Irish contempt for law is an unfortunate heritage 
of the many years when law was tyranny, and prej- 
udice against themselves was not only looked upon 
as a virtue, but paid for by the ecclesiastical and 
governing authorities as a professional service. The 
informer was regularly paid. He received twenty 
pounds for an unregistered priest, and fifty pounds 
for a bishop. Even as late as our own day one hears 
of a Lord Plunket who evicts his Catholic tenants 
because they refuse to educate their children in 
Protestant schools; a Lord Clanricarde whose treat- 
ment of his tenants is such that his own counsellor 
at law describes it as "devil's work.'* 

As far back as 1665 and 1680 laws were enacted in 



IRELAND 239 

the English Parliament absolutely forbidding the 
importation into England of all cattle, sheep and 
swine, of beef, pork, bacon, mutton, and even butter 
and cheese. In 1699 the Irish were forbidden the 
exportation of manufactured wool, lest any or all of 
these, the natural products of a rich grazing country, 
should interfere with the profits and prosperity of 
English merchants. 

One may go far afield to find a more typical ex- 
ample of that characteristic of the EngHsh of bo- 
vinely seeing duty where their interests call them. 
"Toward the end of the seventeenth century," says 
Froude, "the mere rumor of a rise of industry in Ire- 
land created a panic in the commercial circles in 
England. The commercial leaders were possessed of 
a terror of Irish rivalry which could not be exorcised." 
As a result of this stupid commercial fear, England 
set out to paralyze and to destroy the industries and 
the commerce of Ireland by prohibitory measures. 
William the Third, shortly after his coronation, said 
that, for his part, he would do all that he could to 
discourage the woollen manufacture in Ireland. A 
Navigation Act of 1663, confirmed in 1670 and com- 
pleted in 1696, excluded Ireland from colonial com- 
merce. In 1663 and 1669 the English market was 
closed to Irish cattle which were declared "a public 
and common nuisance," as also to Irish meat, butter 
and like products. In 1699 the Irish were forbidden 
to export woollen goods, and under William the Third 
and Anne the cotton industry was ruined by an Eng- 
lish import duty of 25 per cent. "One by one," 
writes Lord Dufferin, "each of our nascent indus- 



240 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

tries was either strangled in its birth, or handed 
over gagged and bound to the jealous custody of 
rival interests in England, until at last every foun- 
tain of wealth was hermetically sealed." It seems 
to have been the policy of England to starve Ire- 
land into subjection, industrially and commercially, 
as the easiest method of keeping her harmless to 
themselves. 

The coming of free trade to powerful England was 
one thing, to emaciated Ireland it meant merely an- 
other blow, another foe, another failure. Ireland 
was no more fit to compete than a starveling to enter 
the prize-ring. And a starveling she is still to-day. 
The death rate in DubHn is 25 per 1,000, the highest 
of any town in Europe. How deplorable this is may 
be judged from the comparison with London, 17 per 
1,000; Paris 1 6. 1 per 1,000, and approximately the 
same for New York. In Dubhn, out of 59,263 fami- 
lies, 36 per cent live in one-room tenements. In 
London the proportion is 14.6 per cent, in Edin- 
burgh 16.9 per cent. It has been said that there are 
as many as 1,500 houses in Dublin in such insanitary 
condition that they ought to be demolished. These 
same houses include 5,383 rooms in which are living 
12,926 persons. 

During a winter spent in Ireland I often asked my- 
self and others why this beautiful grazing country, 
with the huge market of London at its very doors, 
was not made rich by this very opportunity. The 
answer it appears is a simple one. Eggs from Nor- 
mandy pay in carriage to London i6s. 8d. per ton; 
eggs from Denmark, 24s.; and eggs from Galway 



IRELAND 241 

In Ireland, 94s. per ton. Butter from St. Malo or 
Cherbourg pays 20s. per ton to London; butter from 
Antwerp pays 22s.; but butter from Tipperary, 
where I was living, pays 35s. per ton. No wonder the 
Irishman replied to an EngHshman who asked him 
why they did not sell their fowl in London: " Do you 
see that piece of water ? If I could sell that water in 
hell, I could get any money I wanted for it, but the 
job is to get it there." The chief exports from Rus- 
sia to the United Kingdom next to corn and wheat are 
butter and eggs, oats and barley! The chief export 
from Germany to the United Kingdom is sugar, re- 
fined and unrefined! These, with thousands of fer- 
tile acres unused or used for grazing in both Ireland 
and England. The chief export from France to the 
United Kingdom next to silk tissues is millinery, so 
the statistics say, but there is no other proof of the 
fact! Even were the average Irishman not the shift- 
less being that he is, it would not be surprising that 
one Irishman out of every eleven lives on the rates, 
as is the case. According to the figures of the last 
"Statistical Abstract of the United Kingdom," the 
population of Ireland (1908) was 4,363,351, and the 
number of paupers in receipt of relief in unions was 
103,429. The population of Ireland in 1846, or 
roughly half a century ago, was 8,500,000, and has 
therefore decreased just one-half in that time. One 
need read but a few pages of Irish history to discover 
therein the ancestry of many of the Irishman's faults, 
weaknesses and vices. We are not blaming, or 
excusing, but merely analyzing the characteristics 
of this people who alone in the world have hurled 



242 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

the word Failure at the English race we are dealing 
with. 

While the population of Ireland in 1841 was over 
8,000,000, and was in 1901, 4,458,975; the popula- 
tion of Scotland in 1841 was 2,620,184, and in 1901 
was 4,472,103. The number of persons receiving 
poor rehef goes on steadily increasing. In 1903 the 
number was 452,241; in 1904, 488,654; in 1905, 
558,814; and in 1906 562,269. 

While 51,462 police suffice to keep the 39,273,086 
population of Great Britain in order, the 4,386,035 
population of Ireland requires the enormously dis- 
proportionate number of 11,144 police for that pur- 
pose. Ireland has one constable for every 362 in- 
habitants; England one for every 541; Scotland one 
for every 885. Leaving out of count the two capitals, 
London and Dublin, the cost of the English police is 
2s. 3d. per head of the population, while the cost for 
Ireland is 6s. 7d. While the poHce in Scotland cost 
;;g40o,ooo, in Ireland they cost ;^i, 300,000. They 
seem to possess an invulnerable elasticity of irrita- 
bility, at least against England, which, despite pov- 
erty, emigration, police supervision, and centuries of 
severe maulings, crops out again at every available 
opportunity. During the Boer war they cheered the 
Dutch victories in the streets and read and re-read 
with genuine pleasure accounts of defeats of British 
troops. 

Finally, in 1782, when England was busy in an- 
other direction in an attempt to tax without repre- 
sentation, and to control and curtail the commercial 
energies of her colony in America, the Irish Parlia- 



IRELAND 243 

ment was declared to be an independent legislature. 
This was forced upon England after years of an agita- 
tion led by Grattan and Flood, and at a time when 
Ireland had a large armed force raised as a defence 
against England's then numerous foes. The Irish 
Parliament became : The King, Lords and Commons 
of Ireland to make laws for the people of Ireland. 
Following this came the struggle for Catholic emanci- 
pation, but at this demand George the Third, who 
thought, as did many other Englishmen, that too 
much had been granted already, took fright, became 
obstinate, and would grant no further privileges. 
The united Irishmen soon grew into a rebellious or- 
ganization. The French were inclined to aid them, 
and a small French force did land in Ireland, but both 
they and their Irish allies were swept to destruction, 
and again cruelty and slaughter on both sides, fol- 
lowed by famine, were a repetition of the centuries' 
old story. This Irish Parliament of three hundred 
members contained no Catholics, and Ireland was 
nine-tenths CathoHc, and all but some eighty seats 
were in the hands of a few lords and landowners who 
returned whom they pleased. The government still 
controlled, though the Parliament was nominally in- 
dependent. 

It was Pitt who, while Prime Minister, became 
convinced that, to have peace and quiet in Ireland, 
Ireland should be united to England as Scotland had 
been in 1603. To get the Irish Parliament to pass 
an act of union was very different from merely con- 
trolling a government majority, and then, under 
CornwaUis and Castlereagh as representatives in 



244 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

Ireland of Pitt and the English Government, began a 
campaign of shameless and open bribery, which was 
all the worse because acknowledged and condoned. 
It must be remembered in this connection that we 
are reading of a time when such methods were by no 
means uncommon in England itself, where "every 
man," it had been said by a notable statesman, ^' had 
his price!" Though the bribers were blameworthy, 
some one must make them so by taking the bribe, and 
one must leave it to the Irish to characterize those 
who took titles and money to betray their country- 
men. 

"Still as of old 

Man by himself is priced. 
For thirty pieces Judas sold 
Himself, not Christ." 

Owners of boroughs were paid as much as ;^i 5,000 
a seat, and peerages and patronage were lavishly 
given for support. These seats in the Irish Parlia- 
ment were looked upon as so much property bring- 
ing in a large income to their owners, and since the 
abolition of the Irish Parliament meant the cutting 
down of the number of members from say three 
hundred to one hundred, the owners of these seats 
were paid, bribed or promoted as a compensation. 

"The ma,jority of Irish titles," writes Mr. Lecky, 
"are historically connected with memories not of 
honor but of shame." 

Mr. Frederick Trench became the first Lord Ash- 
town; Mr. Will Handcock became the first Lord 
Castlemaine; General Henniker became the first 



IRELAND 245 

Lord Henniker; Sir Richard Quinn became the first 
Earl of Dunraven; the first baroness Dufferin was 
so created at the request of her son, Sir James Black- 
wood, with remainder to himself and his heirs; Mr. 
Robert Lawless became the first Lord Cloncurry; 
Mr. Seeton Pery was himself made Viscount Pery, 
and manoeuvred his younger brother into the earldom 
of Limerick; Mr. Cole became Earl of Enniskillen; 
John Scott, of very humble origin, became Earl of 
Clonmel; James Alexander, a rich parvenu from 
India, buys a seat and becomes Earl of Caledon; 
John Hely, afterward John Hely-Hutchinson on his 
marriage to an heiress of that name, afterward Pro- 
vost of Trinity College of most unpleasant memory, 
received for his wife the title of Baroness Donough- 
more, with remainder to the male heir; James Cuffe 
became the first Lord Tyrawley, and carried the im- 
pertinent demands, then the fashion, to the pitch of 
asking a peerage for his illegitimate son; William 
Tonson became first Lord Riversdale; John Bourke 
is first Lord Naes, then Earl of Mayo; Mr. Corry be- 
came first Baron Belmore, then Earl of Belmore; 
Abraham Creighton became first Baron Erne, and 
later a descendant became Baron Fermanagh of the 
United Kingdom; James Agar became first Lord 
Clifden; all these and more date their elevation to the 
peerage from the time at the beginning of the century 
when England, by open and scandalous corruption 
and bribery, was buying up the Irish Parliament. 
In one day eighteen Irish peers were created, and 
seven barons and five viscounts raised a step in the 
peerage. 



246 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

Even the London Times in i860 characterized the 
history of the relations between England and Ireland 
with prophetic despair: "Ireland will become alto- 
gether English and the United States republic alto- 
gether Irish. Yes, there will be again an Ireland, 
but a colossal Ireland placed in the new world. We 
must gird our loins to encounter the nemesis of seven 
centuries of misgovernment." 

In our own day the Irishman in America does 
what he can to fulfil this prophecy of the Times, 
Here is a portion of a speech made shortly before the 
celebration of St. Patrick's Day in California. The 
speech was received with a tumult of applause. "I 
am glad to see the Irish people arming and practising 
the use of rifles and instruments of war. For cen- 
turies they have been borne down under the tyrannic 
weight of English rule. In every city of the world 
where a patriotic Irishman lives on Tuesday the 
green flag of Ireland will be waved. We must make 
a success of our celebration, for great things depend 
upon it. It will reflect the spirit of Ireland through- 
out the world, and some day it will bring about the 
raising of the green flag where it belongs. The 
Union Jack of England will be hauled down and 
torn in pieces, and two hundred thousand armed men 
will march into the county of Cork and drive the 
English into the sea.'' 

In July, 1863, during our war between North and 
South, the Irishmen of New York became enraged 
at the fearless editorials of the then editor of the 
Tribune^ Horace Greeley. They mobbed the office 
of the Tribune, shouting: "Down with the old 



IRELAND 247 

white coat what counts a naygur as good as an 
Irishman!" 

They mobbed and burned to the ground a negro 
orphan asylum, but were finally thrashed and brought 
to terms by local troops. A fearless and patriotic 
mayor of New York was roundly denounced because 
he would not permit the hoisting of the Irish flag over 
the City Hall of New York. If Mayor Hewitt had 
never done anything else, he deserves a monument for 
that. I like Irishmen, we all, I think, like them in 
America, but America is not Ireland, and Americans 
are not Irish. We fought our fight with England, 
and Ireland must fight hers, and long-suffering as is 
the busy, good-natured American, the world may de- 
pend upon it that he will never be bullied by Irish- 
men, or any other foreign people, into pulling their 
chestnuts out of the fire, or listen to the dictates of 
any knot of malcontents to whom he has given the 
freedom they could not win for themselves. 

The Irish have enough of the English temper in 
them to bully and to grab, but the thrashings they 
have received from the Lion would be as spankings 
to flogging at a cart's tail compared to what they 
would prepare for themselves did they once attempt 
to harness the Eagle in the shafts of their political 
jaunting-car. The Irishman has become far too 
much imbued with the notion that his business is 
agitation rather than exertion. The American peo- 
ple have little sympathy at bottom with this rather 
effeminate view of achieving political, or commercial, 
supremacy. 

America in these days has her own gigantic prob- 



248 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

lems, both at home and abroad, to solve, and she 
needs all her citizens to bear arms and burdens in 
the service of America first, last and all the time. 
The Irish, the Germans, the Enghsh, the Swedes, 
the Norwegians, the Italians, are not in America to 
exploit America for their own purposes, but to make 
and keep America for free Americans, and no one 
who knows the country has the shadow of a doubt 
but that she can and will keep them within these 
bounds. Politicians from time to time pander to the 
Irish, or the German voters, but should these people 
demand for themselves what is intended for all of us, 
there would be a veritable earthquake of wrath 
throughout the country. It is one thing for an 
O'Connell or an Emmet to lead an insurrection in 
Ireland, it is quite another for any Irishman to at- 
tempt to lead an insurrection for or against anybody 
in America. 

The Act of Union in 1801 was followed by a short- 
lived rebellion under Emmet. Wellington finally 
persuaded George the Fourth to grant emancipation, 
and Catholics were finally admitted to Parliament 
after a struggle lasting some three hundred years. 
In 1842 O'Connell started a great agitation to repeal 
the Union. He counselled no violence, but his fiery 
followers broke away from his moderate methods and 
drifted into active rebellion. This rebellion was put 
down, the ringleaders escaped or were hanged, but 
the people were again aroused, and national feeling 
revived, to be followed by the Phoenix conspiracy 
in 1858, and the Fenian movement in 1867. By 1847 
the population of Ireland, through starvation and 



IRELAND 249 

emigration, had fallen from eight millions to less than 
five millions. 

Gladstone and Bright endeavored to bring about 
many much-needed reforms in the administration of 
Ireland. Gladstone carried through his bill to dis- 
establish and disendow the Irish church, and passed 
a series of measures tending toward a better distribu- 
tion of the land. Later a Land Purchase Commis- 
sion was created to assist tenants in buying their 
farms from the landlords. Meanwhile the struggle, 
punctuated as usual by battle, murder, sudden death 
and other horrors, between the peasantry and the 
landlords, continued. Parnell and the Home Rule 
Party are familiar history to this generation, and the 
story of how they forced the claims of Ireland upon 
the attention of England by a system of persistent 
obstruction of all business in the House of Commons 
needs no repetition here. 

On the surface it looks as though all the great strug- 
gles in Ireland had arisen from the attempt to im- 
pose a system of land tenure by foreigners, and the 
confiscation and reconfiscation, under the Normans, 
James the First, Cromwell and William of Orange, 
of the land for seven hundred and fifty years; and 
the imposition of a religious faith abhorrent to a 
majority of the inhabitants, aggravated by laws 
passed to crush out Irish rivalry in various branches 
of trade and manufacture. But this is a superficial 
reading of the facts of the situation. 

England has made herself the greatest empire the 
world has ever known by defects and qualities of 
which something will be said in these pages, but 



250 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

wherever she has colonized she has dealt with an 
inferior people, or with those of her own race for 
whom she has a respect that mitigates the bullying 
temperament, or, where she has persisted and bullied 
her own children, she has found them too much for 
her. Ireland, after one immigration piled on an- 
other of English, is largely English to-day, and Eng- 
land is mistakenly attempting to curb in Ireland that 
vigorous insistence upon personal freedom which is 
the all outweighing quality of these Saxons, whose 
Alfred, whose Magna Charta, whose beheading of 
Charles the First, should have taught by now that, 
when this is eaten out of their blood, there will be 
little of iron left in it. There is no more peaceable 
gentleman in the world, when he is allowed to mind 
his own business, than an Englishman; but whether 
socially in his club, or domestically in his house, or 
commercially in his affairs, when he is meddled with, 
his rudeness, his harshness, his pugnacity and selfish- 
ness are open and incomparable. 

I have taken some pains to dig out and to make 
clear this short outline of Irish history, because the 
relations of these two throughout all these years is a 
suggestive commentary upon the Englishman and his 
ways. He thinks that his steadily progressing bulk 
must push any and every thing out of his way; he 
thinks his courage will cleave a path; he thinks his 
honesty will inspire respect, and his sense of fair play, 
confidence. So they do in India, so they do after a 
few spankings of the natives, in Africa, so they do 
throughout his many settlements all over the East; 
but, among those of his own blood, these matters are 



IRELAND 251 

taken for granted, and not looked upon as God- 
given virtues of a people, whose patronage and whose 
rule should be accepted as a blessing. Nevertheless 
the Englishman goes on just the same, loses his colo- 
nies or lets them alone, but still poses his great bulk 
at Ireland, one century after another, with calm dis- 
regard of the fact that these Celtic Englishmen are no 
more impressed, no more afraid of him, than is the 
American. The Irishman is enraged, the American 
is amused. Apparently he knows no other way. 
The Englishman was permitted until quite recently 
to beat his wife, or to lock her up. If she is not im- 
pressed by the good qualities he has, and be it said 
he has good quahties, then he is at his wits' end, 
and has recourse to a stick. He knows no better now. 

One grows to feel that Ireland is not an island of 
England, but a characteristic of England. All the 
obtuseness, all the blindness to other qualities than 
his own; all the cold stubbornness, all the inability 
to change his ways, or to adapt himself to another 
temperament; all his complete helplessness when he 
is not respected and obeyed from the start; all his 
awkwardness when he attempts kindly compromise 
or cajolery, become exaggeratedly patent in his 
national failure to live at peace with Ireland. 

Though this condition of affairs is most noticeable 
in the case of Ireland, the same social awkwardness 
exists elsewhere. Ireland is audible and voluble, and 
the world has not been left in ignorance of her griev- 
ances; but one now begins to hear a faint rumbhng 
from that hitherto dumb, dark race in India. The 
complaint is along exactly the same lines, what one 



252 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

hears of it. The Englishman must govern, must 
govern alone, must be supreme, must not be meddled 
with by an inferior race, and, mark you, all other 
races are assumed to be inferior. A distinguished 
French publicist and traveller, just returned from 
India, and writing as distinctly a friend to England, 
has this to say: 

" En somme, ce qui manque le plus a I'administra- 
tion anglaise aux Indes, c'est la souplesse: tous ses 
agents sont do parfaits gentlemen, honnetes et justes, 
d'une forte trempe, plus que personne capables de 
resister a ce climat amollissant, possedant au plus 
haut degv6 le self-control^ la faculte de se dominer. 
Mais ils croiraient faire preuve de faiblesse s'ils 
ajoutaient a tout cela quelques grains d'amabilite. 
Ce ne serait pourtant pas un crime de condescendre 
a gagner les sympathies des indigenes, de I'elite tout 
au moins. ..." 

It is plain that other observers, friendly though they 
be, cannot escape the impression that we have em- 
phasized in the foregoing pages. It is fair enough, 
then, to write that nothing is more characteristic of 
England than her seven hundred and fifty years of 
failure to get on with Ireland. Her strength and her 
weakness are admirably and plainly held up to view 
for him, even who gallops, to see and to understand. 
England simply cannot get on with those who do not 
trust her, and obey her, except by drubbing them 
into submission, hoping meanwhile that they will 
grow to appreciate her. The individual Englishman 
is not unlike this. He can turn away from you, ig- 
nore you, go and live by himself without you, or if 



IRELAND 253 

it is worth while, he can try thrashing you, but as to 
winning your regard through any except his nega- 
tive virtues, he is as helpless as a sullen child. 
What then do you expect a man like that to do with 
a wife like Ireland ? These Saxons 



"Who live by rule, 
Grave, tideless blooded, calm and cool." 



I am of the old-fashioned opinion that the best men 
ought to rule, and that when necessary to bring this 
about an appeal to force is justifiable. This has 
been also the pith of England's philosophy on the sub- 
ject. It applies well enough where there is no ques- 
tion of the superiority of the Englishman, but it fails 
lamentably where his superiority is open to question. 
Since 1776 the Englishman has learned that certain 
colonies populated by his own breed will be self-gov- 
erning, whether he hkes it or not, and by a certain 
automatic compromise they are little meddled with. 
But this has not been brought about by any logical 
sequence of ideas. If logic were a man and lived in 
England, he would be the loneliest person in the 
three kingdoms. No theory is ever intended to be 
carried to a conclusion here, but only to a comfortable 
working point. The Irish have enough of the Celt 
left in them to be irritated by this lack of sequence, 
lack of logic, in their neighbors. They cannot be 
made to understand why they are still governed much 
as though they were Zulus. They cannot under- 
stand why they are the only parcel of their breed left 
in the world who cannot govern themselves, and they 



254 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

will not accept the situation on the ipse dixit of their 
brethren across the St. George's Channel. With the 
rights and wrongs of this question we have nothing 
to do. It is of interest to us only that, in analyzing 
the situation, we find a complete breakdown of the 
Englishman's ability to govern, and to live at peace, 
with other peoples right at his own door. It is not 
for lack of experiments that he has failed. He has 
robbed, starved, slaughtered, bribed, used his whole 
artillery of colonizing charms, and he is just where he 
was when he started seven hundred and fifty years 
ago. It is a very remarkable situation; it is notably 
what the student physician would call an interest- 
ing case. It has been operated upon, it has been 
drugged, it has had the fiercest massage by sword, 
and the greatest variety of mud baths and starvation 
diet, and it is still alive, still kicking, still demanding 
some successful form of treatment. 

If, in addition to some little historical information 
on the subject, one has lived in Ireland months at a 
time as I have, the problem is all the more puzzling. 
There is no better fellow going than the Irishman. 
No one could be more companionable, more sym- 
pathetic, more alive to the opportunities of every and 
any situation. The more you see of him at home, the 
more you wonder what there is about him that has 
made him and keeps him England's imperial and 
colossal nuisance. It seems easy enough to get 
along with him. He seems quite as open to the 
ordinary amenities of life as other men. He is a 
good sportsman, a fine soldier, and a gallant com- 
rade. 



IRELAND 255 

"And there isn't a weddin' at all, 
A funeral or a fair, 
Or any sort of fun or sport, 
But me and the shtick is there, 
Impatient to have our share." 

His hos-pitality, though he be but poorly off in this 
world's goods, is genial and unaffected, and though 
he be excitable, and not altogether dependable — 
except in a row — there are other peoples who are 
excitable and not dependable — even in a row — who 
manage somehow to govern themselves, and get on in 
the family of nations without being kept in a school- 
boy's condition. 

This splendid race of Saxons has been dominant 
at a steadily increasing pace for a thousand years 
here, there, everywhere. England cannot live on an 
equality with any other nation. The Englishman 
cannot live on an equality with any other man. One 
need only hear the Englishman, or the English- 
woman for that matter, say: " Oh, he is a Colonial!" 
or *' Oh, he is a Frenchman,'' or " Oh, he is an Amer- 
ican," to catch the subtle distinction always made 
between an Englishman and anybody and every- 
body else. 

*'I do not care about the opinion of foreigners," 
said Mr. Chamberlain in one of his speeches, and 
he voiced the national sentiment. But it should be 
borne clearly in mind that this attitude is not one of 
boastfulness. It is not a conscious or artificial atti- 
tude which is purposely intended to be disagreeable. 
It is not a pose, not conceit; it is far worse than that. 
It is unconscious. It is the natural condition of 



256 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

mind, born of centuries of dominance. It is thor- 
oughly parochial. England knows no world but 
England. The Englishman who is the greatest and 
most extensive of travellers knows only Englishmen. 
This is very impressive indeed. It makes him very 
formidable, very impervious to any influence toward 
intellectual orientation. It is one of the important 
factors making toward the decadence of the Empire. 

What he will not do in Ireland, what he is ap- 
parently constitutionally unable to do, he will find it 
equally impossible to do elsewhere. He has rivals 
now who will be equals ere long, and who may prove 
to be superiors. The world that was governed by 
brawn and bulk, and honesty and fair play — always, 
be it understood, with the Englishman as umpire as 
to what is and what is not fair play — has become a 
wonderfully intellectualized world since the days of 
his last conquerings. 

Commerce is a science, not mere courageous 
piracy. Finance is a science, not mere loaning 
accumulated wealth under the protection of British 
guns. Government is a most complicated manoeu- 
vring of men, each one with a ballot in his hand, not 
mere placating of one party of aristocrats by another 
party of aristocrats, so that both may live in peace and 
in power over the people. German students shut up 
in laboratories steal his trade. Japanese diligence, 
suavity and cunning steal his Eastern trade and his 
shipping. He finds it to his benefit, and for his 
safety, to ally himself with a pagan nation in the East, 
the Japanese; with an utterly unsympathetic nation, 
the French, and a still less sympathetic nation, the 



IRELAND 257 

Russians, in Europe. His attitude toward America 
in 1860-5, when Punch ridiculed Lincoln, and the 
press generally lamented such an early death for the 
republic across the water, has changed somewhat in 
its open expression, but very little in spirit. But 
these things mean nothing to the average English-' 
man. He has a hazy notion that either he is not as 
rich as he once was, or that other nations have grown 
to be respectable rivals in wealth. He was, I must 
admit, rather stunned by the South African war, 
when an inconspicuous settlement of Dutchmen cost 
him twenty-five thousand hves, and $1,250,000,000 
in gold, before he conquered them. He was stunned 
because this was something he could understand 
readily. A fellow who can knock him down is the 
kind of fellow he can appreciate. These other, 
more subtle threads, in the shuttle of the civilization 
and progress of nations, he only faintly sees, and 
dimly understands. 

This is, after all, a fine fellow I have been de- 
scribing, but it is evident that he has his defects and 
his weaknesses. Ireland seems to be the hot-water 
bath that brings out the eruptions on the English 
character, showing the need of a physician and a 
change. This is the reason why a chapter on Ireland 
is a necessity in any notes such as these on England 
and the English. It is a distinctly fair illustration, 
because it is not a matter of party politics, not a mat- 
ter open to question by the most prejudiced, not a 
matter to be excused or explained by any of the 
usual subterfuges of politics or patriotism, not a mat- 
ter in which other nations take any great interest and 



258 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

which tempts a foreigner to have a biassed opinion; 
it is simply seven hundred and fifty years of failure 
to solve a domestic problem — seven hundred and 
fifty years of inability to get on with other men, a 
quality upon which the Englishman particularly 
prides himself. 

One of two things must be true then: either the 
Irishman is impossible to live with, or the English- 
man's superiority must have been shown, in the many 
cases where he has succeeded, among inferior peo- 
ples; or, at any rate, a more amenable, a more con- 
querable people, than the Irish. There are some 
millions of Irishmen in America, and though they do 
lend a certain piquant and saline savor to our munici- 
pal politics, they are not altogether impossible to live 
with. The Catholic population in and around Que- 
bec largely outnumbers the Protestants, but there is 
no trouble there. The race and the religion are ap- 
parently not wholly to blame. Whose fault is it then ? 
Fortunately we are not concerned with a categorical 
answer to our own question. Many able English- 
men have tilted at this question without answering it. 
Our purpose in leading up to the question, and asking 
it, was only to bring out a characteristic of the Eng- 
lish. With them it is dominance or nothing — aut 
C(Esar aut nullus. Dominance by compromise, or 
dominance by distasteful alliances, or dominance 
even by bribery— as they bribed the Danes to leave 
them in peace, or as they have tried to bribe Ireland 
— dominance by intrigue, or dominance by force, 
but nothing less than that. They can rule in no 
other way, they can live side by side with other peo- 



IRELAND 259 

pies in no other way. As we have seen in another 
chapter, they reward success more generously, more 
magnificently, than any other people in the world. 
Their House of Lords is, as every one knows, not a 
chamber of blood or birth, it is a chamber of the 
chosen successful ones. They have no great ruling 
nobility of high descent, they have an aristocracy 
of success. Their peers are brewers, ship-builders, 
soldiers, sailors, newspaper editors, manufacturers 
of steel and iron, Jew financiers, mammoth shop- 
keepers, lawyers, chemists, and the like. More than 
half of the present House of Lords have been created 
since 1830. Thus they recognize success, power, 
ability. Thus they believe that the world belongs 
to those who take it. Thus they shoulder you on one 
side, penetrate to the far ends of the earth, claim 
everything, fight for everything. If they cannot beat 
you, they let you alone, but as for living with you on 
terms of equality, never! But they feel bound to 
live with Ireland. Ireland cannot be allowed the 
liberty to make friends and alliances with France, or 
with Germany, or with Japan, or with America. 
Ireland cannot be allowed to interfere with the 
Orangemen, the Protestants who live in the north of 
Ireland. England cannot give up Ireland, and she 
cannot make Ireland acknowledge her superiority; 
and one or the other is necessary for peace between 
them. One wonders why Lord Curzon, or Lord 
Cromer, or Lord Milner, or perhaps a soldier like 
Lord Kitchener, is not given a free hand in Ireland 
for a given number of years. Anything would be 
better for the prestige, self-respect, and fair fame of 



26o ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

England than that she should continue — she the 
modest, she the moral, she the law-abiding, she the 
patronizing and preaching nation of the world — that 
she should continue this squabbling, hair-pulling, 
scratching, this vulgar domestic vituperation, to the 
amusement perhaps of the light-minded, but to the 
wonderment and scandal of all serious-minded men 
of all other nations. 

Another reason why she does continue is precisely 
another characteristic of England, and the English, 
worth noting and keeping in mind. As a race they 
have no nerves. They are protected from most, I 
may say all, of the minor troubles, trials, griefs, which 
annoy, upset, and even drag into their graves, other 
more sensitive people, by a non-conductor of insen- 
sibility. The most amazing thing about the Eng- 
lish and Irish embroglio is that the English look upon 
it as a matter of course! They are constitutionally 
sure that they are right. Are we not the most God- 
fearing, the most humane, the most just and the most 
Christian nation? they say to themselves; then how 
is it possible that we can have murdered, starved, 
driven into exile, robbed, bribed, and pompously mal- 
treated our brother Irishman ? But they have done 
it. There is no doubt in any man's mind about that. 
Think of the callousness, the insensibility to pain and 
starvation and murder, of a people who for seven odd 
centuries can live in such relations with a weaker 
neighbor. Picture the quite impossible situation for 
the French, or the Italians, or the Americans, or the 
Germans. We could not stand the strain of it. It 
would get on our nerves. It would irritate us be- 



IRELAND 261 

yond all expression. We could not push it on one 
side and go about our business unconcerned and un- 
pitying. Much less could Frenchmen, or Italians, 
or even Germans, take such a matter-of-fact view 
of such a problem. 

This has been a very valuable quality to the Eng- 
lish in their conquering of, and ruling of, other peo- 
ples. In countless other ways one might illustrate 
this sort of well-fed imperviousness to the common 
griefs and annoyances of life; but in so doing, one 
might press harshly upon their social and domestic 
life, and make these notes assume an air of prejudice 
or bitterness, which is the last thing in the mind of the 
writer, and, above all things, to be avoided. This 
illustration of Ireland is all sujQScient to prove the 
point, and at the same time avoids personalities. 
One has only to picture any other nation, except 
perhaps Russia, living contentedly, going about its 
afiFairs, superbly unconscious of any wrong on its own 
part, with this gigantic, centuries old, social sore a 
part of its social and political body. One has only 
to picture such a thing to make plain this character- 
istic English trait of confident and stolid self-satisfac- 
tion. This trait eclipses even their rather ostenta- 
tious claim to be a distinctly religious nation. The 
anima naturaliter christianissima is a rare thing in 
England, though the profession of religion is not only 
a State affair, but practically universal. They wear 
their religion as a formal garment. It never has, 
and does not to-day, soften in the least the overbear- 
ing temperament, interfere with wars of commercial 
aggression, or condemn immorality in the highest 



262 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

places. The overmastering qualities of a conquer- 
ing race are but slightly colored by their religion. 
It is an affair of the State. One is loyal to it as one 
is loyal to the King, but, as a nation apparently, 
the general aims and purposes, and the methods of 
working them out, are not materially affected by the 
mandates of giving the cloak also, turning the other 
cheek, or not worshipping Mammon. The Irish 
question is in no danger of settlement by an appeal 
to the Englishman's religious sentiments. Nothing 
apparently can influence, or mitigate, these prime 
characteristics, illustrated by the treatment of Ire- 
land: the worship of success and supremacy, and the 
stolid indifference to anything and everything which 
interferes with the Englishman's obtaining them. 



VIII 

AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 

"^ I AO announce too much of what one means to 
I do is the best way not to do it at all," says 

-■- Tallyrand. We all know how dangerous it 
is to promise pleasure to others from what has 
pleased us. Our dearest friend may seem but a dull 
dog to the stranger to whom we introduce him. The 
book, the play, the picture, the tour in a new coun- 
try, the hotel in which we have been comfortable, all 
these we may praise to another, and he only finds 
them commonplace or positively disagreeable. 

There are, however, two things that I dare an- 
nounce to the traveller as superlatively beautiful. 
-If he be disappointed the fault is his, and not my 
praise of them. The pictures of Velasquez in the 
Prado at Madrid and an English country landscape 
in May surpass any possible preliminary praise of 
them. You may announce what you will, but the 
reality still surpasses the promise. 

Twenty miles out of London, and the sun is shin- 
ing, and the train glides along with green fields, 
hedges of hawthorn, trees blossoming on every side. 
England looks to be the huge well-cared-for farm of 
a Croesus. The absence of much sunlight, so dis- 
tressing to the American in London, is an advantage 

263. 



264 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

now. True, the country is an old country, and had 
been ploughed and planted and harrowed for close on 
to a thousand years before America was even dis- 
covered. This gives the country-side a mellowness 
and well-groomed look, and the vaporous sunlight 
softens all the outlines, hides the harsh features, and 
gives the landscape the dreamy, far-away, misty 
loveliness of a mirage. Just now the fields that are 
not brown, having been turned up for sowing, are of 
a delicate green, and hundreds of sheep and lambs 
scurry about as the train flies by. If I were an Eng- 
lishman, it seems to me that I should grow positively 
thirsty for this scene if I were long away from it. 
There seem to be no angles; field melts into field, and 
hedge into hedge, with here and there a ribbon of 
road which seems to join rather than to separate them. 
The houses, big and little, are all of brick or stone 
and have the advantage of lending their interstices 
to ivy and climbing roses, and the older they are the 
softer the color and outline. Houses of wood look 
to be dishevelled and shabby as they grow old, while 
brick and stone are the more dignified the older they 
grow. 

I believe it is true that the midlands of England 
are as fertile and easily cultivated as any similar 
number of acres in the world, and to the eye of the 
traveller they seem so. 

But where are all the people ? Did we leave them 
all in London, and Oxford, and Worcester, and Bir- 
mingham? All through the afternoon and into the 
early evening we travel, and I could have counted 
more houses, certainly more sheep, than men and 



AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 265 

women from the carriage window. It may be a holi- 
day, it may be the day's work is finished, it may be 
that the laborers, slow-moving, and sombrely clad in 
grays and browns, are not so distinctly seen in this soft 
light. In any case, it seems as though one might 
step out and take possession of as much of this lovely 
country as one cared to, and this adds still another 
quality to the charm. There is solitude without 
loneliness. It is so well cared for, so gentle and cul- 
tivated in appearance, that one feels the centuries of 
human toil, the intimate companionship of men, but 
without their interruption. 

England is London says one, England is Parlia- 
ment says another, England is the Empire says still 
another; but if I be not much mistaken, this stretch 
of green fields, these hills and valleys, these hedges 
and fruit trees, this soft landscape, is the England 
men love. In India and Canada and Australia, in 
their ships at sea, in their knots of soldiery all over 
the world, Englishmen must close their eyes at times, 
and when they do they see these fields green and 
brown, these hedges dusted with the soft snow of blos- 
soms, these houses hung with roses and ivy, and when 
the eyes open they are moist with these memories. 
The pioneer, the sailor, the soldier, the colonist, may 
fight, and struggle, and suffer, and proclaim his pride 
in his new home, in his new possessions, but these are 
the love of a wife, of children, of friends; that other 
is the love, with its touch of adoration, that is not less, 
nor more, but still different, that mysterious mingling 
of care for, and awe of, the one who brought you into 
the world. 



266 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

This is the England, I take it, that makes one feel 
his duty to be his rehgion, and the England that every 
American comes to as to a shrine. When this is sunk 
in the sea, or trampled over by a host of invading 
Germans, or mauled into bankruptcy by pandering 
politicians and sour socialists, one of the most de- 
lightful spots in the whole world will have been lost; 
and no artist will ever be able to paint such a picture 
again, for nowhere else is there just this texture of 
canvas, just this quality of pigment, just these fifteen 
centuries of atmosphere. 

One cannot describe every country town in Eng- 
land, so I have chosen the one I love best. If it is 
more beautiful than other country towns, if I am 
partial, even prejudiced, in regard to it, so much the 
better. Criticism seldom errs too much on the kindly 
side. 

This particular town had a castle, built by no less 
a person than a daughter of the great King Alfred, 
who led his Saxon neighbors in driving off the Danes. 
This town had a charter granted to it by the King 
three hundred years before Columbus sailed into the 
west. It is an old town even for England, its hoary 
antiquity drifts out beyond the harbor of America r 
imagination into an unknown sea. To an American 
it is almost too old to be true. One might as well say 
in an Oklahoma village that Adam Hved here! At 
such a distance of time years are too indistinct to be 
worth numbering. The town haU stood in the main 
street, and still stands there, when the "Mayflower" 
set sail, and one of the local inns was an old-established 
hostelry before we made our first noise in the world, 



AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 267 

taking pot-shots at the redcoats near Lexington. 
The members of one family represented the town in 
Parliament for several centuries, and the old corn- 
mill dates back almost to the days of Charlemagne. 

In a wholesome old age the features, the speech, 
the manners, the opinions soften; thus a gentle old 
lady has a charm that no youthful maiden, be she 
ever so beautiful, can rival. As for men, I wonder 
that any woman is willing to marry a man under 
forty. So it is with a town. Not Time itself can 
ever console us for the lack of this long vista back 
through the centuries. Neither dollars nor energy 
can manufacture mellowness. 

There is no lack of manuals, documents, and eru- 
dite treatises on the economic, political, religious and 
social life of England. The student need only look 
through the catalogue of any large library to find data 
for the support of his theories, or theories with which 
to confirm his data. But when all is known that has 
been written on the laws and traditions and customs 
that influence the life of a nation, there still remains 
the peculiar atmosphere, the social climate, that ther- 
mometers and barometers can only register; they 
can no more describe them than a box of colors can 
paint a picture. This must be acknowledged in de- 
scribing an English country town. 

Given the differences between a republic and a 
monarchy; between a new country and an old 
country; a country where there are still millions of 
acres of unoccupied land, and a country where the 
Jand is in the hands of a comparatively few landlords; 
a country that has had free education ever since it was 



268 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 



settled, and a country where education was for cen- 
turies considered undesirable, or, at an} rate, un- 
necessary, for the masses; a nation where distinctions 
of class are recognized in the constitution itself, and 
a country where no such distinctions, poHtical or 
social, are generally accepted; and even then there 
are still differences which cannot be tagged with 
names, but which are plants centuries old, and having 
qualities not to be analyzed, qualities like those of 
old pictures or old wines, born of age. 

The moment the stranger puts questions to his 
neighbor in this English town — a town, I may say 
in passing, of about six thousand inhabitants — the 
first differences discover themselves. The English- 
man of Northbridge in England does not know as 
much, nor does he take as much interest in the affairs 
of his town, as does the American of Bear's Cove, 
Massachusetts. The whole machinery of local gov- 
ernment, until very lately, was based upon tradi- 
tions, the origins of which are only known to the 
antiquary or the student. In England laws are al- 
most always the outgrowth of custom and tradition; 
in America the laws were made brand new for a 
particular purpose, easily recognizable by the least 
profound observer. In England the laws of the land 
are helped out by the fact that the same customs and 
habits which made the laws also made the man who 
obeys them, and he wears them hke a well-worn suit 
of clothes. In America the man made the laws, and 
feels rather superior to them, as one might feel toward 
clothes not altogether comfortable in their fit. This 
is part of the secret of the law-abidingness of the Eng- 



AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 269 

lishman and the American tendency to law-defying- 
ness. It is not strange then that the American knows 
more about the affairs of his town than does the Eng- 
lishman. One would naturally be better informed 
about one^s own children than about one^s ancestors. 

In England, too, the people have not had the fran- 
chise long, and consequently the masses are not yet 
accustomed to feel, or to take upon themselves, much 
political responsibility. The middle and lower classes 
are only just beginning to question the political and 
social statics quo. For centuries it has not occurred 
to them that things could be other than they are. 
"It has always been so'' has been until lately the 
stupefying reason for letting things alone. Amer- 
ica, on the contrary, was bom of revolt against the 
political, social and religious status quo, and England 
was left for two hundred years more of "it has al- 
ways been so," when her rebellious ones sailed away 
to Virginia and Massachusetts. 

In America, politics ranks as one of the domestic 
virtues; in England politics has been, and is largely 
even now, the obligatory occupation of the few who 
can afford it, though this state of things is rapidly 
changing in both town and country since the widen- 
ing of the franchise and the passing of the Corpora- 
tion Act. In America it may almost be set down as 
an incontrovertible proposition that no man of Lord 
Rosebery's wealth and social position, for example, 
could be elected President of the United States. In 
England until the last few years no man could have 
hoped to succeed in politics without a private income; 
in America nothing is such an awkward handicap 



70 



ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 



as great wealth, while if part of this wealth were spent 
in the innocent recreation of keeping a racing-stable, 
political preferment would be absolutely prohibited. 
The English people as a whole still look to wealth 
and position to govern them, while in America the 
people are still jealous, not to say unreasonably sus- 
picious, of wealth and power. 

These are the larger, the enveloping reasons why 
the American in his country town takes more interest 
in its political affairs than does the Englishman in 
his. The Englishman's town was made for him, and 
the centuries have swathed it in customs that are 
almost sacred. The American's town he made him- 
self, and he looks upon it not as a graven image, but 
as a model of clay that may be often and easily altered 
without sacrilege and probably with advantage. 

The country town in England serves as well to 
exploit all these national differences as though it were 
England under a microscope. The classes are as 
distinctly marked as though they wore uniforms. 
At the base of the social pyramid are the agricultural 
laborers earning from $2.50 to $3.25 a week; fifty 
per cent of the laborers in England earn twenty-five 
shillings a week or less. A fact worth remembering 
when w^e revise our tariff! Then the farm servants 
and house servants of the small gentry, earning, the 
men from $90 to $250 a year, the women from $60 to 
Si 25 a year; then the shopkeepers and their assist- 
ants and employees; then the richer merchants and 
mill or factory owners, and ranking with them the 
local professional men, lawyers, doctors, Dissenting 
ministers, land agents, and the like; next come the 



AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 271 

gentlemen farmers and landed proprietors, and the 
clergy of the Church of England; and finally the 
county gentlemen and the neighboring nobility, with 
the lord lieutenant of the county, often a great noble, 
as the official and political apex. 

The manufacturer, mill-owner, and the like re- 
ceives of course both social and official recognition 
according to his success and his wealth. As we have 
noted elsewhere, the successful brewer or manufact- 
urer often crowns his career by being made a peer, 
when he leaves his own class and enters another. 
The same is true of the great lawyer, the successful 
politician, and so on. I may be mistaken, but I be- 
lieve the physician is the only representative of suc- 
cess in the professions who thus far has failed to 
reach the dignity of the peerage. 

In the New England town I have in mind — and 
very proud I am to keep it in my memory — of about 
the same size and relative importance as the English 
town I am describing, the governor of the State, who 
happens to live there, and the cashier of the local 
bank, and the shopkeeper, if he chance to be an in- 
teresting companion on account of his antiquarian 
knowledge, and the editor of the small local news- 
paper, if he be of intelligent proportions, would meet 
at one another's houses, if their common tastes made 
it agreeable. But it would be considered the height 
of social glory in this English town should a shop- 
keeper, no matter how big the shop, or a bank 
cashier, no matter what his erudition, or even a physi- 
cian or small solicitor, or small factory proprietor, 
find himself on equal terms at the table of one of tV« 



272 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

county nobility, much more at the table of the lord 
lieutenant of the county, except on some occasion of 
a formal function. Though the lord lieutenant of the 
county is usually a man of rank, he may be in no 
sense superior in social weight to other nobles in the 
county; for the time being he outranks them by 
right of his office. 

If you cannot be a duke with a large rent-roll in 
England, by all means be an agreeable American, 
for to one and the other all doors are open. You 
dine with all classes, and all are willing to dine with 
you. No one is jealous of you, no one envious; no 
one suspects you of pride or vainglory, because, being 
a sovereign yourself, you are equally at home with 
sovereigns or with the people abroad. No one else 
can have the inestimable privilege of warm friend- 
ships with all classes, and consequently an intimate 
knowledge of the ways of life, of men and women of 
every social grade. 

Just as the wages are smaller, so the salaries and 
incomes are smaller among these people than with us. 
The largest house in the town, built of brick, with 
garden, green-house and small stable, and containing 
rooms ample for the accommodation of a family of 
six, keeping a governess and seven servants, keeping 
two horses and doing a fair amount of entertaining — 
such an establishment as this can be kept going, 
without painstaking economy, on an income of 
$6,000 or $7,000 a year. In no place in America 
would the upkeep of a similar establishment for such 
a sum be humanly possible. In the first place, the 
governess and seven servants would require in wages 



AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 273 

$2,500 a year, while a similar staff in England would 
cost somewhere in the vicinity of $900 a year. This 
particular house was in the town itself, and was far 
more comfortable than the majority of the houses in 
the town. People with an average income of from 
one thousand to three thousand dollars a year live 
in far more convenient houses in America than in 
England. The matter of water, heat, lighting, suit- 
able kitchens and laundries is insisted upon with us, 
and is lacking to an appalling extent in English coun- 
try or even town houses, and also in the more preten- 
tious country houses themselves. The houses of the 
poorer classes, laborers, clerks, servants and the like 
are mere boxes, with none of the conveniences to 
which Americans even of the poorer classes are ac- 
customed. Hundreds of thousands of Americans 
live in houses admirably equipped as to bathrooms, 
lighting and heating conveniences and the like, where 
hundreds are thus housed in England. Indeed Amer- 
ica is in a class quite by herself, so far as mechanical 
contrivances for personal comfort are concerned, as 
compared with England, or any other country in the 
world. The average level of comfort is far higher 
than anywhere else, whatever may be said as to the 
satisfaction of the rarer and more luxurious and more 
refined demands of the more cultivated. At any 
rate, America is easily chief among dwelling-places 
where mediocrity has nearest approached to its 
millennium. Rent, clothes, service, wines, beer, 
spirits, tobacco, all are cheaper in the English than 
in the American town, and prices of meats, vegetables, 
bread, butter, poultry, eggs much the same. In this 



274 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

particular town in Shropshire, however, the beef and 
mutton, though costing about the same amount, or 
a little less, per pound, are very much better than in 
a similar town in Massachusetts, are of as fine a 
quality, indeed, as the very best beef and mutton 
served in the best hotels and restaurants in New York. 
As you walk through the covered outer entrance to 
the door of the local inn, you may taste the prelimin- 
ary joys of the carnivorous gastronome, for there are 
hanging the joints of beef and mutton, the beef getting 
that black-purple look which promises tenderness, 
and at dinner the visual promise is kept to the full. 
There is no such mutton in the world as a Welsh 
sheep fattened on the luscious grass of these hills and 
valleys. 

"The mountain sheep were sweeter 
But the valley sheep were fatter 
So we thought it would be meeter 
To carry off the latter." 

But in the sheep from Wales fattened here one has 
both the sweet and the fat. Alas! the preparation of 
food in this town, as in all others I know, and in Lon- 
don itself, except where foreign cooks and foreign 
methods are used, is by no means equal in quality to 
the materials provided. The only thing that can be 
said in praise of English cookery is, that one is never 
tempted to eat too much I It satisfies legitimate 
hunger amply, but is never a temptation to gourman- 
dizing. With all these fertile fields, it is a ceaseless 
source of wonder to the traveller that England should 
have nothing but potatoes and cabbage, and sea-kale, 



AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 275 

and vegetable marrow, day after day, and year in 
and year out, and import millions of pounds worth of 
eggs — some of them from as far away as Russia — 
butter, cheese, poultry, salads and small vegetables. 
On the other hand, the home-cured ham and bacon, 
at my friend's house in a neighboring county, his 
beef and his mutton, and his famous band of sturdy 
children, make one pause to remember that by their 
fruits ye shall know them. To those who have 
enough of bread, and beer, and beef, and bacon, and 
plain vegetables, and to boot plenty of out-door ex- 
ercise and a somewhat varied social life, this diet is 
evidently well suited. These English, Scotch, and 
Irish men and women of the well-fed and well-cared- 
for classes are the sturdiest of the human race. No 
doubt my own experience is that of others, that you 
can bear more physical fatigue on this diet, and in 
this climate, than in America. The hard work of 
shooting over dogs in Scotland, of four and sometimes 
five days a week hunting in Ireland, can be kept up 
for weeks on end, with only a pleasurable sense of 
fatigue; while in our electrical climate, I am per- 
sonally, at least, able to do only, say, two-thirds as 
much. Our athletic performances bear me out in 
this assertion. At the hundred yards, the two hun- 
dred and twenty, and quarter mile, at the high jump 
and other contests where rapidity and tremendous 
momentary exertion are required, we beat the Eng- 
lish; while at the mile, three miles, and other tests 
of endurance rather than speed, they beat us. 

Probably the most noticeable difference between 
two such towns, the one in America, the other in Eng- 



276 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

land, is the entire absence of foreigners in the latter. 
In the house I know best at home, out of a staff of 
some ten or more people, only one is an American, 
and he is the gardener, and in all the fundamentals 
he is a gentleman if there ever was one. The others 
are from Ireland, England, Sweden, and France; 
France, of course, supplying the governess. But 
here in the English town they are all English. In 
America the rough work of the laborer is all done by 
the foreigners, the servants are all foreigners, the 
common schools are filled with foreigners, the paup- 
ers are practically all foreigners. I have lived in 
America in the South, and West, and East for many 
years, and I puzzle my brains, and prod my memory, 
but I cannot recall that I have ever come in contact 
with an American pauper, though I know of course 
that there must be such. This must account for the 
fact that pauperism seems to be taken so much more 
for granted in England than in America. On Satur- 
day, April the eleventh, 1908, there were nearly one 
hundred and twenty-five thousand persons receiving 
in-door and out-door relief in London alone, and they 
were practically all English. One feels differently 
perhaps about being a pauper if other paupers are of 
one's own breed, so, too, one feels differently about 
helping them. They are a recognized class in Eng- 
land, but no American, despite the distress, vaga- 
bondage, and poverty in our great cities, has taught 
himself to accept pauperism as a necessary condition 
of masses of his own race, and as a necessary tax up- 
on the State. There are hundreds of towns all over 
America where a confirmed and recognized pauper 



AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 277 

would be as great a curiosity as the man skeleton or 
the fat woman of a travelling circus. I question if 
this be true of any single town in England. 

On the other hand, this fact of the homogeneity of 
the race makes for mutual understanding and solidar- 
ity. In spite of the social gradations we have noted, 
the common grounds of intercourse are nowhere so 
many as here: witness the cricket, the hunting field; 
the dog and horse and agricultural and flower shows; 
the friendly and even confidential relations between 
the landowner and his farmers, bailiffs, woodsmen, 
trainers, jockeys, huntsmen, and so on. There are 
no false distinctions, only real distinctions, so the Eng- 
lish claim, and no one but a fool or an ape cares to 
break them down. On ground where men can meet 
without self-consciousness, they do meet; but why 
should men who meet because they play cricket, or 
ride to hounds, or breed dogs, or love flowers, wish 
to meet in the drawing-room, or at the dinner-table, 
when they have not the same experience, the same 
opportunities, or common tastes? 

Nowhere do men of sympathetic interests meet 
more often and more easily, without thought of social 
distinctions, than here, and no doubt this is due to the 
fact that differences of social rank are fixed, and 
universally recognized and accepted. The general 
understanding of this rather paradoxical social situa- 
tion, and the smoothness with which social life moves 
is due again to this fact that they are all English. 
This is a key to the understanding of one another, 
which, while it defies analysis, must be recognized as 
important. Peoples who speak a different language 



278 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

never fully understand one another, and even when 
they speak the same language, as in the case of the 
Americans and the English, they constantly fail to 
see eye to eye to one another. We give the same 
words a different shade of meaning, just as we give 
them a different intonation. These people, all of 
one race, from the highest to lowest, master and man, 
have an advantage of mutual understanding and a 
kind of taciturn sympathy with one another that are 
priceless in solving many of their problems. 

The very machinery of government in the town it- 
self runs more easily for this fact. Going from small 
to great, the Parish is the smallest unit in England, 
having a Parish Council, or, if very small, a Parish 
Meeting. Groups of Parishes form the Union, the 
Union being the unit for the administration of the 
Poor Law. Unions again, where a Borough is con- 
cerned, are divided into "Borough'* and "District," 
i. e. Town and Country. Their respective Councils 
deal with roads, sanitary matters, etc., etc. Groups 
of Unions form the County, which deals with main 
roads, education, lunatics, and so on. In some cases 
a Union is partly in one County and partly in an- 
other; then it is divided for County purposes. 

The English town of Northbridge is governed as to 
water, lighting, roads, sanitary matters and the like, 
by a Mayor, and a Town Council over which he pre- 
sides. The Town Councillors are elected by the 
voters of the Borough, who consist of all property 
owners, practically all occupiers of any taxable 
property, and lodgers who pay a certain specified sum 
for their lodgings. Even the sons in a family, twenty- 



AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 279 

one years of age or over, and living at home, must be- 
come lodgers in their own homes, they must have 
rooms of their own in the house, which they may lock 
up against their parents, and they must, as has been 
said, pay a certain sum therefor, viz., ten pounds un- 
furnished, to entitle them to vote. Women, too, may 
vote for the Councillors, but not for Parliamentary 
candidates. Married women may not vote, and 
other women, spinsters and widows, must be property 
owners, or lodgers paying a certain sum, and coming 
under the same rules as to their right to vote as men. 
This privilege is exercised in certain places, and in 
certain political crises appealing particularly to wo- 
men very largely. In other places and at other times 
scarcely at all. It is not a matter than can be settled 
by giving figures, since the numbers differ widely. 
In New Zealand, where the women may vote, but 
where they have not been obhged to fight for the 
privilege, they care very little for it, and seldom ex- 
ercise their right. To what extent the novelty of the 
franchise may influence the women voters in England 
it is as yet too early to decide. For the moment it is 
evident that the majority make comparatively little 
use of their right to the ballot. At this present writ- 
ing there are 1,141 women on Boards of Guardians; 
2 on Urban District Councils; 146 on Rural District 
Councils; and 615 on Education Committees. The 
Councillors elect so many Aldermen, and from their 
own number the Alderman and Councillors elect the 
Mayor. In the case of Northbridge, the town is 
divided into wards for the purposes of elections, but 
this is not so in all towns. When a Town Councillor 



28o ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

is elected an Alderman, it creates a vacancy in his 
ward, and there follows another election. These 
elections take place every three years. The Alder- 
men are elected for six years, and half of them retire 
every three years. This system, however, only dates 
from 1882, the year of the passing of the Corporation 
Act by Parliament. 

The Schools are controlled: (i) by Parliament, (2) 
by the County Council, (3) by local managers. 
Parliament is represented by the Board of Education, 
whose inspectors visit and report on all schools, and 
the government grant of money is only paid to such 
schools as satisfy the government requirements as to 
efficiency. 

The County Council, through its Education Com- 
mittee, pays the teachers, fixes their salaries, and 
provides all equipment, such as books, black-boards, 
furniture, coal, and so on. The government grant 
is paid at the rate of so much per child to the County 
Council, who make up the deficiency by levying a 
tax over the whole county. The tax in this partic- 
ular county in 1907 was, for elementary education 
five pence halfpenny in the pound, and for secondary 
education one-half pence in the pound, or, for both 
'taxes, twelve and a half cents on every five dollars. 

The local managers are six for each school, divided 
as follows: four Foundation Managers, appointed 
under the trust deeds of the several schools; one ap- 
pointed by the Town Council, and one by the County 
Council. 

In Northbridge there are four schools, though one, 
the Blue Coat School, a Foundation school, is very 



AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 281 

small and rather an exceptional case. The three 
schools which practically serve the town are: the 
school in the Parish of the High Town, the school in 
the Parish of the Low Town (these are merely geo- 
graphical distinctions), which are both Church of 
England schools, and the school of the Roman Cath- 
olic Parish. In very many towns there are Council 
schools directly under popular control, but in North- 
bridge, which is a staunch Tory town, in a staunch 
Tory county, there are none. 

Practically all of the appointments to the local 
subordinate offices are made by the Town Council, 
and are not elective, the auditor being one of the few 
office-holders who is elective. In the matter of 
licenses for public houses, a much vexed question 
just now, the licenses are granted annually by the 
local justices to old license holders, but in the case of 
applications for new licenses, or of a refusal to renew 
an old one, the local justices refer the matter to the 
County Justices, or the Court of Quarter Sessions, 
who deal with such questions through the County 
Licensing Committee. The local justices also grant 
licenses for buildings where stage plays may be acted 
and the like. 

Justice, in a borough or town like Northbridge, is 
administered by Borough Justices, who are mostly 
local tradesmen and professional men; they deal with 
small offences at Petty Sessions. More serious of- 
fences are dealt with at the Borough Quarter Ses- 
sions, presided over by a Recorder, who is a barrister 
and a paid official, with a jury. Still more serious 
offences are sent up to the County Town, in this in- 



282 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

stance the Town of Shrewsbury, and tried before a 
Judge of Assize. 

In the County District, the Magistrates as a rule 
are local gentry. They sit in the town itself for Petty 
Sessions, and in the County Town for Quarter Ses- 
sions, when, in place of a Recorder, they select one of 
their own number as chairman, who is also unpaid. 
He is, however, usually a barrister, and I know of one 
instance where a gentleman studied law merely to fit 
himself to occupy this position in his own neighbor- 
hood creditably. Here again the most serious offen- 
ders, as with Borough offenders, are tried at Assizes.. 
The offender himself in some cases may demand to 
be tried by the higher court. These unpaid magis- 
trates are suggested by the Lord Lieutenant, and ap- 
pointed by the Lord Chancellor. The Lord Chan- 
cellor is an officer of the government which may at 
the moment be in power, the Lord Lieutenant of the 
County is not necessarily so. When these gentlemen 
happen to belong to different political parties, it is 
hinted that the Lord Chancellor sometimes appoints 
magistrates without consulting the Lord Lieutenant. 
This is not often done, and the arrangement on the 
whole works without friction. To be a County 
Magistrate is the ambition of many men, and the gift 
of this distinction is rarely if ever mischievously be- 
stowed. It is not supposed to be a question of party 
politics, but of personal worth, and there is no com- 
plaint that the party in power misuses this privilege. 
These amateur magistrates make mistakes, and Mr. 
Labouchere and Truth devote many paragraphs to 
their shortcomings, but the system works so well that 



AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 283 

there are seldom complaints from the class who are 
judged by them, and over whom they exercise con- 
trol. It is generally held by those who come before 
them that more leniency may be expected from these 
unpaid magistrates, than would be shown by paid 
magistrates. 

The clergy of the Church of England are State 
officials, for marriage and funeral purposes, and to- 
gether with the church wardens, control church prop- 
erty. They are also ex-officio chairmen of their 
respective vestries, but vestry meetings nowadays 
are of historical rather than practical interest. They 
are often also, under certain trust deeds, trustees of 
the schools and Parish charities and not infrequently 
ex-officio chairmen of the Trustees, or School 
Managers. 

The clergy of the time of Swift, Sterne, and Addi- 
son were not precisely of the gentleman class. They 
were placed below the salt, and often mated with the 
upper servants. There seems to be a falling off 
again now in the quality of the inferior clergy. I 
know of a neighbor's nurse-maid who is engaged to 
a curate, and they no longer occupy the position of 
influence of half a century ago. This may not be 
wholly local, for no one can doubt the decreased 
influence of the clergy of New England, in the last fifty 
years. Up to and during the time of the struggle 
between North and South in America, the Unita- 
rians of New England, and the Presbyterians and 
Dutch Reformed ministers elsewhere were not only 
the moral, but the civil leaders of the people. One 
can count such clergymen now on the fingers of one's 



284 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

hands. Such men as President Eliot of Harvard, 
ex-President Cleveland and Mr. Joseph Choate have 
carried far more weight in their own local affairs and 
in the country at large, than any clergyman I can 
mention, unless it be perhaps Bishop Potter and Rev- 
Dr. Edward Everett Hale, when in the full vigor of 
his powers. It is by no means intended to infer from 
this statement that the bulk of the clergy are not hard 
working or without influence. In the country dis- 
tricts they are valuable public servants, and, accord- 
ing to their willingness, lend a hand here, there, and 
everywhere. But, with many exceptions of course, 
they receive nowadays more of social rank from their 
position as clergymen than they bring to that position. 
One often hears the lament that it is not easy to get 
a curate who is a gentleman — using that word, of 
course, in its limited technical sense understood in 
England. The temptation to men of a certain social 
grade and of moderate abilities to go into the church 
is of course great, when thereby they can, without 
much exertion, become members of a profession which 
gives them a standing that neither their birth nor their 
intellectual powers would have won for them in any 
other way. This is true also in America, where there 
are hundreds of ministers of all denominations who 
owe their position to their profession and who would 
at once sink out of sight were they not buoyed up by 
their profession. Though it is both in England and 
America the noblest calling of the noble, it is also 
largely used as a refuge by the incompetent and the 
contemptible. No man has a right there who is not 
man enough to hold his own anywhere. There are 



AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 285 

still examples in England of parsons who are only 
clergymen in name; men who wear the uniform, but 
who not only hunt, but are masters of packs of fox- 
hounds themselves; men who shoot, and farm, and 
are what Sydney Smith described as half county 
squire and half parson, under the name of " Squar- 
sons." One of these died only the other day, who 
had been Master of Hounds for forty years. Such 
men may say, perfunctorily, Benedictus henedicat be- 
fore meals, but beyond that their clerical duties are 
purely formal. This stamp of cleric is dying out, 
though it may be doubted whether the clerical snob, 
without public school or university behind him, is 
an improvement or even an equivalent. There are 
men in this English town whose fathers well remem- 
ber a certain rector who went home from the tap- 
room of The Swan every Saturday night with his legs 
in a wabbly state of drunkenness, whatever may have 
been the condition of his head. That type of man 
has, of course, disappeared never to return. 

The fact that the clergyman is in an independent 
position as regards his parishioners, since he is not 
looking to them either for his salary or for retention 
in his place, gives him a freedom that is valuable. 
However much of a heretic a man may be, he may 
admit that the Church of England and the Roman 
Catholics have much to be said in praise of their ad- 
herence to the logically sound arrangement that the 
preacher and teacher should not be obliged to look 
directly to those whom he teaches, for his means of 
subsistence. There are numbers of men whom we 
all know, both in England and in America, who are 



286 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

entirely unhampered by this awkward relation. On 
the other hand, what is more contemptible than the 
position of many ministers who know, and whose 
flocks know, that they are hanging on to their posi- 
tions for their daily bread, and who are as fearful of 
the frown or disapproval of the local knot of richer 
men in their congregations who bear the bulk of the 
parish expenses as though they were lean hounds in 
a kennel? 

But whatever their faults, the English clergy do a 
large amount of detail work that no one else is called 
upon to do in these country towns and villages. In- 
deed the three marked differences between life in an 
English and an American country town are: the 
absence of foreigners, the amount of work done by 
unpaid ofiBcials, and the remarkable dulness, awk- 
wardness, and inarticulateness of the lower classes. 
The mental difference between the university edu- 
cated gentleman, who is, let us say a Coimty Magis- 
trate, and the ordinary laborer, is greater, far greater 
than between any two Americans in similar positions 
in an American town. 

There has been little or no chance for education. 
In 1870 the age for compulsory school attendance was 
fixed at ten; it was raised in 1893 to eleven, and in 
1899 ^^ twelve. As late as 1901, out of every ten 
thousand children attending school, the number who 
remained after the age of twelve was only 4,900, and 
in 1906 it was only 5,900. As a test of what boys ac- 
quired and remembered after leaving school, the head 
of a large labor bureau submitted all boys between 
sixteen and eighteen to a simple examination. They 



AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 287 

v^^ere asked to do some perfectly simple sums, and to 
copy in their own handwriting a few lines of print. 
The result showed that one-fourth could write moder- 
ately, one-fourth fairly, and one-half " wrote in quite 
a disgraceful manner." As to arithmetic, 10 per cent 
answered the two questions, 15 per cent one of them, 
and 75 per cent neither of them. Such people must 
necessarily leave their governing and their guidance 
in all affairs of importance to others. 

One would go far and search long to find a town in 
Massachusetts without its free public library, and a 
good one at that. Similar opportunities for reading 
are almost unknown in the English towns of the type 
I am describing, and there is little demand for them. 
Newspapers and magazines are in every house in the 
American town, but only in a comparatively few 
families in the English town is there any con- 
tinued reading of even such ephemeral literature as 
that. 

There has been no opportunity to take any part in 
political affairs either local or national. The local 
tap-room is the laborer's only forum, and the fields 
he cultivates, or the beasts he tends, limit his experi- 
ence; and as a result the lowest class of laborers in 
English country neighborhoods, English though they 
be, are in a condition of intellectual apathy that posi- 
tively startles the American when he comes in contact 
with them. In the town in question, with a popula- 
tion slightly over six thousand, there are some nine 
hundred voters, but there is a surprisingly large num- 
ber of men of the proper age to vote who are dis- 
franchised by the provisions already mentioned as to 



288 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

financial qualifications. It may surprise American 
readers to learn that there is a very large male popu- 
lation in England who are still, despite recent re- 
forms, wholly deprived of any participation in govern- 
ment by lack of the necessary financial qualification. 
In that sense England is very far from being a free 
country. 

As we have noted elsewhere, the total population 
of England and Wales at the last census (1901) was 
32,527,843. Gf these 15,728,613 were males, and 
of these again 6,697,075 were males of twenty-one 
years of age or over. At the elections in 1907 the 
number of registered electors was: Coimties, 3,428,- 
721; Boroughs, 2,553,144; Universities, 19,068, or a 
total of 6,000,933. There were, therefore, 696,142 
males twenty-one years of age and over who were not 
registered voters. We must, however, add largely to 
this because the census is of 1901, while the electors 
are of 1907. No doubt some are not registered 
through neglect, though very few escape from the 
fine net drawn through every election district by the 
professional election agents. It is probably, there- 
fore, not far wrong to say that out of a male popula- 
tion twenty-one years of age and over numbering 
7,000,000, 700,000 were not registered as voters, most 
of them probably because they were not qualified to 
vote. In the county town of Shrewsbury, for ex- 
ample, with a population of 28,395 ^t the last census, 
the number of Parliamentary voters was 4,819, 
divided as follows: Ratepayers, 4,423; Lodgers, 164; 
Service, 128; Freeman, 104; with 1,301 women en> 
titled to vote for municipal officers. In the last 



AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 289 

Parliamentary election there actually voted out of the 
4,819, 4,350. This does not weigh heavily upon 
those who are thus deprived of the ballot. They 
are quite without ambition — this does not refer 
to factory towns — and of extraordinary mental ' 
lethargy. Even their speech is of the guttural, in- 
distinct kind, that one usually associates with people 
partially dumb. Their vocabulary is of the smallest, 
and their mental pace tortoisian. This appeals to the 
stranger, the American stranger at least, because he 
knows no such type among those of his own race at 
home. Where he meets with stupidity and political 
disability, it is among the lower class of foreigners, 
but here are families who have lived side by side per- 
haps for centuries, the one in the squire's house, the 
other in the laborer's cottage, yet the difference be- 
tween them mentally and politically is as was the dif- 
ference between the Southern planter and the hands 
in his cotton fields. There is little fear of exaggerat- 
ing the opiumonic dulness and apathy among this 
class, although I appreciate that the Englishman who 
is accustomed to it may wonder that the stranger finds 
it so noticeable. It is one of those national traits 
that the fresh eye and ear must be trusted to describe 
more accurately than may the eye and ear of the 
native long accustomed to it. The English rustic 
of this type is uneducated, inarticulate, inaudible 
and grotesquely awkward, both mentally and phys- 
ically. But he has his small political value for he is 
always and unalterably for no change ! He grumbles, 
but his grumbling means little, and effects nothing, 
and plays no more part in the affairs of the world 



290 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

than does an accidental tap on the big drum in the 
music of an orchestra. 

There is a fierce controversy at the date of this 
writing (1908) over a new Licensing Bill. One sees 
on every side placards announcing that *'Your beer 
will cost more!" At the same time the bill is called 
"confiscatory," and that it will ruin the holders of 
brewery shares is announced. In addition to this it 
is claimed that it does not promote temperance. I 
am no political oracle, but he must be dull indeed 
who can swallow these three statements together, viz., 
that beer will cost more, that just as much beer will 
be drunk, and that the breweries will be ruined. 
The rustic is evidently counted upon not to analyse! 

"All still and silent — far and near! 
Only the ass with motion dull, 
Upon the pivot of his skull 
Turns round his long left ear." 

There is absolutely nothing like him in America, 
and he must be seen, and heard, and watched in his 
native lair to be understood or appreciated. He is 
useful in doing the heavy work of farm and field, but 
politically and intellectually he is more Hke one of 
his string of stout draught horses than like a modern 
man of our race. What is steadiness in the upper 
classes droops into sheer stupidity in the lower classes. 
It is their apathy that accounts to some extent for the 
entire lack of feverish excitement over temporary 
troubles which characterizes us Americans. One 
would suppose that there were no storms, murders, 
poisoned food, in this country, while in America we 



AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 291 

revel in these and other tragedies. Who in America, 
for example, knows of the Derby pork-pie epidemic 
in 1902, when two hundred and twenty-one persons 
were attacked and four died? Who remembers the 
Manchester arsenical beer episode of 1900, in which 
over six thousand persons were slowly poisoned ? In 
the last annual report of the Local Government 
Board, which relates to the year 1906-7, it is stated 
that the number of samples annalyzed under the Sale 
of Food and Drugs Acts in 1906 was 90,504, of which 
8,466, or 9.3 per cent were certified to be adulterated. 
Who in America knows that? But who in all the 
world was not made to hear about Chicago's canned 
beef! Our rustic Englishman even heard those mis- 
chievously exaggerated reports from Chicago, and 
probably thanked God he was not as other men are, 
as he said grace over his poisoned pie and his arseni- 
cal beer. We Americans are accustomed to ex- 
aggerated retailing of our faults and misdeeds even 
from public men in high places. Our common- 
school sophisticated people rather enjoy the excite- 
ment. They are not educated up to the point of 
appreciating its immaturity and lack of perspective, 
but they are wide awake enough to be interested and 
even stirred by it. In England the mass of people 
would not be stirred in the least; while the gove<^n- 
ing class, trained and disciplined, would ignore such 
exuberance as bad form. It is quite our own fauk, 
and not a matter for surprise, therefore, if, when we 
are thus advertised, the country people with whom I 
am now dealing look upon us in America as being an 
excitable, rather untrustworthy people, holding noth- 



292 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

ing sacred, and with little personal pride or elevated 
patriotism. 

If there is a difference in the alertness of the people, 
there is also, it must be admitted, a difference in their 
leaders, who would, and who do, consider it disgrace- 
ful to advertise themselves at the expense of the blun- 
ders, or even the sins, of their countrymen. 

Though one may look askance at the political and 
educational condition of this class of the English 
populace, one can have little but admiration for the 
thousands of Englishmen who work away year in 
and year out at the details of local government in 
England. 

The country Towns, Boroughs, and Districts, and 
Parishes, and all the machinery of their government, 
are entirely managed by the voluntary labors of 
those with the wealth, leisure, and ability to do so. 
They sit as Magistrates, they govern the towns as 
Councillors and Aldermen, they look after the roads, 
sanitation, water supply, lighting, schools, poor- 
houses, and are expected by the powers that be in 
Parliament to put into, and keep in working order, 
educational and licensing enactments; and recently, 
the whole reorganization of the territorial forces, or 
new Army Bill, and the putting into effect of the 
Small Holdings Act, are to be largely entrusted to 
them for their successful operation. That they un- 
dertake all these duties, that they do them so well, 
and with so little — almost no — friction, and with 
so little dissatisfaction to those whom they thus 
govern, is, I am inclined to think, the most impressive 
feature of English life. 



AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 293 

They are called "The Great Unpaid," and the 
name is truthful rather than humorous. They act 
as local commissioners, known as General or Dis- 
trict Commissioners of Taxes, and collect the income 
tax, while quite independent of party and holding 
their appointments directly from Parliament. All 
Justices of the Peace are ex-ojlcio commissioners. 
The land tax is also collected by unpaid commission- 
ers. Of the County Councils having under their con- 
trol lunatic asylums, bridges, main roads, which are 
responsible for the county rate, I have written. 
Chairmen of Quarter Sessions also try all cases not 
necessarily going before Judges of Assize, and also 
hear appeals from Justices of the Peace at Sessions. 

More than an hundred hospitals in London and 
the country are administered by governors and com- 
mittees, as are the British Museum, the National and 
Portrait Galleries, and many others. 

Royal commissions and departmental committees 
do an immense amount of work. Lord Beaconsfield 
said: "The government of this country is consider- 
ably carried on by the aid of Royal Commissions. 
So great is the increase of public business that it 
would be probably impossible for a Minister to carry 
on afifairs without this assistance." The London 
County Council demands and, fortunately for the 
nation, commands the most varied talents for the 
successful administration of the affairs of London. 
All of these men are unpaid in money and scarcely 
even receive very wide recognition, let alone applause. 
The School Committee in London alone spends nearly 
$18,000,000 a year, and has under its management 



294 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

some 750,000 children and 10,000 masters and mis- 
tresses. The managers of these schools give their 
services and in addition look after the schools of 
cookery, laundry work, manual training, gymnastics, 
swimming schools, home nursing, asylums for the 
mentally defective, blind schools, truant schools, 
pupil- teachers' schools and so on. No country in 
the world receives so much and such valuable service 
from its leisure classes, or rather its upper classes, 
since many of these men are already professionally 
engaged, or busy with large private affairs. The 
large landholdings, the concentration of wealth, the 
position and privilege accorded to birth and breeding 
are thus in some sort compensated for. The most 
superficial student realizes that these people would 
not countenance an idle, or a purely pleasure-loving 
aristocracy. Herein lies the secret of the perman- 
ence of the English classes in these days of rule by 
the masses. On the whole they pay, and pay with 
strenuous and honest service, for what they receive. 
The chapter on "Who are the English?" outlined 
the historical forces, or genealogy, of this system of 
unpaid self-government. If the ownership of the 
land in a few hands, and the aggregation of wealth 
in a few hands are evils, this wonderful system of ef- 
ficient unpaid local government goes some way to 
palliate them. The saving of expense to the tax- 
payer must be enormous, and it may well be set down 
as unquestionably true that the work is far better 
done than it could be by a paid staff of political serv- 
ants. Administration, whether at home or abroad, 
is apparently the birthright of the well-trained Eng- 



AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 295 

lishman. When one sees at close quarters how 
admirably he keeps his own house in order, one 
is the less surprised at his hit)ierto unparalleled 
success as a colonizer and administrator in other 
countries. 

The application of law without common-sense 
results in friction and chicanery unending; while 
common-sense without law becomes mere paternal- 
ism tempered by tyranny. The happy medium is 
the application of the law by common sense, and 
nowhere may this be seen to better advantage than 
h^re. Imagine the British Empire administered for 
a year by Frenchmen! If it were not for the horror 
of what would follow to innocent people, nothing 
could be more grotesquely ludicrous. The results 
to the humorist would be even more illuminating 
than should the English undertake to do the dress- 
making and millinery work of the French. I venture 
to say that nothing in the whole realm of aestheticism 
could be more awful than that. 

Even as complicated a measure as the new Small 
Holdings Act, which, roughly described, is a bill to 
enable persons without land in England and Wales to 
become possessed of a certain number of acres by 
proper payments, the land of course to be leased or 
purchased outright from the larger landowners, has 
been turned over to the County Councillors to work 
out. When one realizes the jealousies, and the job- 
bery, that such a taking and giving of property might 
entail, one must needs envy in a measure a nation 
where there is a competent body of unpaid workers 
willing to undertake so distasteful and so technically 



296 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

difficult a task. This very day there appears in the 
Morning Post the following advertisement: 

EMPIRE MOVEMENT 

Ladies and Gentlemen of independent means are invited to 
offer their services gratis for the promotion of the "Empire 
Movement" at home and throughout the Empire. No expenses 
paid. Formation of local permanent Committees, distribution 
of literature, etc. — Address: Earl of Meath, 83, Lancaster Gate, 
London, W. 

The italics are the letter writer's. 

To what extent this appeal in a morning paper 
will be answered I have of course no means of know- 
ing, but it is a pertinent and timely proof of what has 
been said in regard to the faith of the Britisher in the 
existence and willingness of the unpaid and unpro- 
fessional worker to take additional burdens upon his 
shoulders. At any rate it will probably result in 
correspondence for the noble lord that very few men 
would care to undertake gratuitously. They do not 
confine their interest and their activities to official 
matters of administration. In such semi-public mat- 
ters as hospitals, agricultural and flower shows, cricket 
and rowing, and football, and provident clubs, golf, 
and here and there polo clubs, they not only support 
and encourage, but they participate. Their interests 
of this kind are even greater and more varied than in 
the public work which is done under the law. It is 
this genuine and wholesome good-fellowship between 
all classes which tempers the strict social demarca- 
tions. There are classes to be sure, but the classes 
all belong, and take pride in making it evident that 



AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 297 

they do belong, to one all-powerful class, which is 
England. 

The more prominent one is by birth, wealth or 
position, the more it is looked upon as incumbent 
upon such an one to take an active part in local and 
national affairs. The masses have grown to feel 
that they can depend upon the classes to lead, and 
to lead courageously and wisely. Though England 
has become perhaps more democratic in certain 
ways, it is still very evident that the Englishman 
likes a gentleman to lead him. I am told that in the 
army this is made unmistakably evident. It is not 
mere snobbery, though there may be a touch of it, but 
it is the centuries-old instinct of the Enghsh to have 
faith in noblesse oblige as a real factor in life. 

There died only lately a shy, awkward English- 
man, of great name and great estates, to whom it 
was a kind of torture to speak in public, to whom it 
meant hours of drudgery to master problems of 
State. He became the most trusted of English 
statesmen. When people spoke of "The Duke,'' 
it meant the Duke of Devonshire. He was never in 
the least shifty, or ingratiating, or amenable to even 
the lofty bribes of office or ambition. He held a brief 
.for England, and made no fuss about it. He was 
typical of the class, which, numbering its thousands 
far less conspicuous than he, do the work of England 
because they consider it a duty. When England 
arrives at her Pass at Thermopylae, this large class 
will have to be reckoned with, and I venture to proph- 
ecy that there will not be even one left to tell the news, 
if things go against them. 



298 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

This sense of duty to England, when exercised by 
the Enghsh abroad, takes on an air of aggressiveness 
and superciliousness which have often been noted by 
foreigners. As a matter of fact they are unimagina- 
tive administrators, rather than supercilious. They 
look upon themselves as sentinels of a kind of Ang- 
lican Almighty whether at home or abroad, and the 
stiffness of their deportment should be forgiven them, 
rather than held up against them. A man who has 
India at arm's length and Ireland squeaHng at his 
feet, must needs be robust and matter of fact, rather 
than nervous and an idealist, if he is to sleep nights. 
As an example of devotion to duty I cite the case of 
an English gentleman of comfortable income who, 
finding when the South African war broke out that 
he had no military experience, enlisted and went out 
as a farrier or blacksmith. He had learnt horse- 
shoeing as an amusement in his youth, and was, and 
is, an amateur in gold and silver and iron work. He 
shod horses until his value was recognized for other 
duties, and he came home a major, having been twice 
wounded. What can Ireland, or Germany, or other 
enemies do against a nation whose gentlemen are 
made of such stuff as that! * 

Of the smaller domestic social life in the town itself 
the variations are so many that it would be quite im- 
possible to make an inclusive category without weari- 
ness to both writer and reader. There are musical, 
and debating, and mutual improvement societies, 
and these are becoming more and more common, and 
they flourish or not according to the talent available. 

One marked difference between the English and 



AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 299 

the American town is the part played by the local 
churches in the American towns. They are often 
the centre of the amusements of the town. Around 
them grow the literary and musical and even the 
dramatic clubs. Church "sociables," and picnics, 
and suppers, are often part of the regular programme 
of church work. According as the local pastor is 
energetic and of varied talents, social and literary, 
these activities flourish. In England this is not the 
custom. The people in the town itself lunch and 
dine together, and on a much smaller scale keep the 
social ball rolling along much the same lines as their 
wealthier neighbors of greater social position. I well 
remember my astonishment at the first dinner given 
to some ten or a dozen neighbors who had been civil 
to us, to find in the hall where hats, coats, and wraps 
had been left, various rolls of music of different sizes 
and description. I hastily informed the hostess of 
this discovery. Our duty-loving English guests had 
come prepared to do their share toward the general 
entertainment after dinner. This was before the 
days of bridge playing, and what happens now I 
know not. But at that time each one came prepared 
to sing or play for the edification of the others. Most 
amateur music in England, as elsewhere, my ex- 
perience teaches, is not an aid to digestion; and to the 
ultra-sensitive it may even be a test of patience; but 
the English are duty-doing rather than artistic, and 
an amiable host forgets of course certain painful 
laryngeal exercises in his appreciation of the unselfish 
desire of a guest to do his or her share toward the 
general entertainment. 



300 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

The English dinner party, in the provincial towns 
and cities at any rate, is a heavy, prolonged and rather 
lugubrious affair. One feels sometimes as though it 
would be neither surprising nor inappropriate should 
one suddenly hear a voice saying: "Brethren, let us 
pray!" In England, as elsewhere, little people give 
bad big dinners, and big people give nice little 
dinners. 

It was considered proper in Northbridge to give 
rather pretentious dinners of many courses, with serv- 
ants added to the staff for the evening. I have seen 
on more than one occasion the groom, in livery of belt, 
breeches and boots, assisting at the service of the 
dinner. It must be added, however, that the dinners 
were given apparently as a social duty, and as a return 
for similar courtesies received during the year, rather 
than as an attempt at display. It adds something of 
both ludicrousness and lugubriousness to a dinner 
to hear the assistant of the local undertaker, who is 
serving as a waiter for the evening, whisper to your 
host, who has ordered your glass refilled with cham- 
pagne: "There ain't no more. Sir!" Even if one 
be still thirsty, the incident is forgotten, however, in 
the knowledge that your host is doing his best in your 
honor. 

There is little exuberance or elasticity in provincial 
hospitality, though it is as kindly and generous as 
anywhere in the world. They labor under the dis- 
advantage of certain racial characteristics, which, 
while it makes administrators of the finest quality, 
does not produce entertainers. I can imagine that 
the Duke of Devonshire himself was probably not a 



AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 301 

scintillating host, and no doubt England thanks God 
that he was not, and with reason. 

In the American town that I have in mind as a 
contrast, there was no attempt, even by people of 
similar means and position, to live up to any such 
social standard as that of dinner-giving on any scale 
whatever. 

Strange as it seems, having in mind the smallness, 
geographically, of England and the ease with which 
one may go from place to place, the English town 
is more an entity and less dependent upon neighbor- 
ing large towns and cities than is the case in America. 
The people in Northbridge keep within their own 
borders more, and depend more upon themselves 
for such amusements, recreations and social enjoy- 
ments as they have, than would hold true of an Amer- 
ican town. Here, as elsewhere, they cultivate the 
faculty of being sufficient unto themselves, and dis- 
play that resourcefulness in small matters which dis- 
tinguishes them in large affairs. 

Here again, too, their climate influences their way 
of living. I doubt if there was one man in a hundred 
in Northbridge under seventy-five and not a pauper 
who was not an active participant in some form of 
sport — hunting, shooting, cricket, tennis, golf, row- 
ing — and many in addition interesting themselves in 
the local militia, volunteers or yeomanry. Some 
part of every day in the year they can be, and are, out 
of doors. While in Bear's Cove more time is given to, 
and more interest taken in, novel or reading clubs, 
in Northbridge out-door sport c.laims more time and 
keener interest. While from the economic point of 



302 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

view it may be regretted that the land is so unequally 
distributed, from the point of view of the inhabitants 
of a country town, it is a most agreeable and con- 
venient arrangement. The land is all cultivated, and 
the fields, and woods, and country lanes are in and of 
themselves a vast park, open to all so long as there 
is no disturbance of the game and the cattle. And 
what a park it is! The soft, dreamy, drowsy, Eng- 
lish countryside, in the summer months at least, is 
the fairest setting in the world for a holiday, and goes 
far to account for the English love of out-door life and 
for many of the differences between an American 
and an English country town. 

Perhaps the main, the fundamental, difference 
between the two is after all that the English being less 
imaginative, and with fewer opportunities, and hence 
with less incentive to change their social or financial 
status, seem to the American to be more contented, 
more peaceable, and calm — the unsympathetic 
American might phrase it as duller, less enterprising. 
These country town people are seemingly striving to 
live as did their fathers and grandfathers; in America 
the restlessness is the result of the strife on the part of 
most people to have a portion of the wealth, the good 
fortune, the opportunities, of their grandchildren. 
The Englishman looks back for his standard, and 
makes tradition and precedent serve as guide; the 
American looks forward, scans eagerly the far horizon 
of the future, rebels against old customs, against the 
ways of the grandfathers, scoffs at caution, and lives 
as much as he can in the future. The Englishman 
lives upon his income knowing how hard it is to in- 



AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 303 

crease his capital; the American all too often lives 
upon his capital and looks upon the opportunity to 
participate in the enormous increase of natural wealth 
of his country as a more or less assured income. The 
Englishman prosaically tries to live upon what he 
has; the American lives upon what he thinks he de- 
serves, upon what he expects. One can readily see 
how this fashions differently the setting of life. The 
one results in calm, in contentment, or, at any rate, a 
forced contentment which imitates the reality; the 
other results in an attitude of expectancy, of constant 
striving and restless watchfulness. The American 
even in a country town is surrounded on all sides by 
the evidences of what twenty-five years of Future have 
done; the Englishman is surrounded, on the con- 
trary, on all sides by what hundreds of years of Past 
have done. The American naturally enough leans 
forward; the Englishman leans back. We all know 
which is the more alert position of the two, and which 
is the more restful. The one is trying to keep what 
he has; the other is trying to wring what he can from 
the future. The one plays with what he has; the 
other gambles for what he wants. The one tries to 
make himself comfortable in last year's nest; the 
other is looking for the best place to build himself an- 
other nest, better and bigger than the old one. 

The country town in England and in America 
differ accordingly. In the one they are making the 
best of what they have inherited; in the other they 
are mainly solicitous about what is to come. The 
house of the Englishman is being mellowed and 
smoothed down. More vines and roses grown on it 



304 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

every year. The house of the American is in a con 
stant state of repair, of being added to, of being im- 
proved. Both to the eye and to all the other senses 
the one spells repose, quiet; the other advertises 
activity and restlessness. Each prefers his own. 
Fortunately, it is no business of mine to decide be- 
tween them. If I have come anywhere near accuracy 
in noting the differences, I have satisfied my own pur- 
poses. 



IX 

SOCIETY 

IT is with some misgivings that I put the word 
"Society" as the heading for a chapter. The 
word has been so misused, and is so often sup- 
posed to apply only to that small knot of people who 
are the mere dregs of opulent idleness that one is 
inclined to apologize for its serious use. It is not for 
me to place the blame in any one quarter, upon the 
news and sensation-hungry press, upon the notoriety 
loving wives, or upon the advertising husbands, but 
the trouble lies somewhere there. That the very 
word "Society'* should call up visions of monkeys, 
madcaps, and mountebanks, reckless expenditure, 
gilded display — a company of men and women, 
in short, engaged in the fatuous activity of trying to 
mould pleasure out of idleness, a task as hopeless as to 
build an eduring monument out of mush — shows 
at once how false must be the standards which have 
lent this meaning to the word. 

There is, none the less, and despite these loose 
vagaries of meaning, such a thing as Society in every 
capital and in every country, difficult as it is to define. 
It bears something of the resemblance to the rest of 
the community' that the sunny side of a peach, upon 

305 



3o6 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

which a monogram or the head of the King has been 
outlined by the sun, does to the rest of the peach. 
It has had more sun, more care and more money- 
spent upon it. It impHes first of all wealth, and after 
that certain subtle laws of cohesion which make this 
company of men and women known as Society, the 
acknowledged, significant, and socially powerful as- 
sociation of their day and generation. Such a com- 
pany existed at Versailles, still exists in Vienna, is 
easily distinguishable in London, and in a more 
shadowy form in America. 

Where there is a king and a court this company 
finds its centre there, and one knows where to go to 
look for it. Where there are none, the centre is 
shifting and evasive, and the boundaries indeter- 
minate. 

In other chapters it may be seen that the English 
do not take readily to either the social or political 
dictatorship of a king, nor have they ever been cour- 
tiers. Until within a comparatively few years the 
wealth of England has been the wealth of landholders 
and landlords. The members of this class have 
represented the nation politically and socially, both at 
home and abroad. From them have been drawn 
the members of Society. It is often said that any- 
body with money may become a member of Society 
in England, and this is with many limitations true, 
but it is not, as many people think, new. England 
has always been willing, not to say eager, to distin- 
guish worth and wealth. James the First, needing 
money, created two hundred baronets at one thousand 
pounds apiece at Burleigh's suggestion. Charles 



SOCIETY 307 

the First insisted upon creating knights, whether 
the knighted liked it or not, in order to collect the 
fees. 

The landowning or territorial aristocracy has been 
recruited again and again from the successful in 
other walks in life, either for good, bad, or indifferent 
reasons. In the last fifty years the wealth of the 
landowners has decreased enormously, and the 
wealth of the manufacturer, the banker, the builder, 
and those engaged in commerce of whatever descrip- 
tion, has increased even more noticeably. As a 
result of this more people have been taken into this 
body in the last few years, but this has always been 
the custom in England. It marks no change, only 
a difference in quantity. It is, and always has been 
in England, from this class that Society emerges. It 
is the only class here from which any distinguished 
company could come. 

As they have been also the governing class and as 
London is the seat of government, London has been 
the setting for all social activities of any importance. 
There is social life of course in Edinburgh, and in 
Birmingham, and in Dublin, and in Leicester, but 
Society meets in London. Society not only comes to 
London, but must come to London. There are no 
rivals, and there is nothing to call Society anywhere 
else. The body from which Society is drawn and the 
playground or meeting place in the season are fixed. 
This accounts in no small measure for the lack of ad- 
vertising and notoriety about social matters here. 
In the season there is so much going on, so many 
political, social, and other affairs, that it is physically 



3o8 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

impossible for the newspapers to distinguish them all 
with head-lines and paragraphs, or to make sensa- 
tions of them even were that the custom. Any one 
of a dozen functions, all in one day or night in Lon- 
don, would be meat and drink to the sensational 
press for columns of matter and days of comment in 
America. When it happens that a horse show, a 
church congress, a county cricket match, or a school 
or university cricket match, inter-regimental polo 
match, a regatta on the Thames, half a dozen balls, 
a political hostess's reception, an international ex- 
hibition, the Royal Academy picture exhibition, are 
all going at about the same time, the journalist is 
swamped by his material, and people and parties 
are left inconspicuously and happily alone by the 
very impossibility of sensationalizing everything. 
Where in New York or Washington there is one wed- 
ding, or one ball, or one football match, or one big 
dinner, London provides a half dozen of each day 
after day, and even the housemaid would be bored 
by an attempt so colossal to play upon her curiosity, 
her taste for high life, or her love for exciting gossip. 
If every fellow in the play is a "noble Marquess" 
or a "belted Earl" one becomes surfeited, no matter 
how voracious the appetite. London for three 
months in the year absorbs the entertainers and enter- 
tainments of all England, and each and all are more 
or less lost in the maze of social doings. Court func- 
tions are officially noticed, but without comment; 
lists of names are given, and those who care to do so 
permit their gowns to be described. Any one who 
wishes may, on payment of a guinea, chronicle his 



SOCIETY 309 

arrival, departure, or whereabouts in the staid col- 
umns of the Morning Post; and a few people through 
their secretaries, or other paid agents, contrive to keep 
themselves more or less beparagraphed from time 
to time. But no body of people, great or small, find 
it to their credit, or to their advantage, to permit a 
minute advertisement of themselves along theatrical 
lines. London is so much bigger than anybody or 
anything in London, that the very bulk of the place 
keeps all more or less inconspicuous. No man or 
woman can be interested or active along so many 
social, political, and athletic lines, and as a conse- 
quence each is subdued to the color of his or her own 
employment. There is no one centre for the news- 
paper limelight to play upon, and its distribution over 
such an enormous stage leaves all the actors in a less 
glaring light. 

Less easily explained, but none the less to be noted 
is that law by which Society, as well as art, and litera- 
ture, and politics, follows the nation^s centre of 
gravity. In the days of Elizabeth, for example, the 
centre of gravity was among the middle classes, and 
Drake and Raleigh were great men. After the 
Restoration the centre of gravity moved toward the 
aristocracy, and one has only to glance through 
Bishop Burnef s history of the time, by the way, to 
discover for one^s self how vastly improved are the 
manners and morals of men and women since those 
days of the foul and the filthy in Society and the 
Court. There are few even professedly pornographic 
writings containing such a list of bestial details and 
scandals as those enumerated, apparently with some 



310 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

gusto, in the first edition of this ecclesiastical worthy's 
History. 

At about the beginning of the eighteenth century 
the centre of gravity, both social and political, be- 
came fixed in the great Whig families who had carried 
through the Revolution. The Society of London 
drawing-rooms then, and thereafter, maintained a 
vigorous influence both in politics and in literature. 
It is from these great territorial families, whether 
Whigs or Tories, that Society ever since has derived 
its sustenance, its traditions, and its power. 

Such, roughly, is the pedigree and the background, 
as London is the meeting place, of English Society 
for three months in the year. It would be missing 
a chief characteristic of English social life not to bear 
in mind just here, that it is only for these two, or at 
most three, months that Society meets in London. 
The Englishman may have a house in London, but 
his home is always in the country. The best of them 
still love the land. It is at the country-houses, where 
for the greater part of the year the English are at 
home that one sees English Society in its natural and 
graceful setting. Even the clothes of the women are 
becoming, and the manners of both men and women 
appropriate and happy in these surroundings they 
love best of all. In their own homes in the country, 
doing the things they genuinely love to do, shooting, 
riding, fishing, looking after their estates, entertain- 
ing generously, surrounded only by those agreeable 
to them, with nothing to make them self-conscious; 
here at last the Englishman thaws, and becomes al- 
most bvable. He has been criticized, this Englishman, 



SOCIETY 311 

in these pages, never with intentional unfairness, 
but in this setting of his own home in the country, 
there is not a word, except in praise — and I may- 
add on my own behalf — in affection and admiration 
to be said. If you want him at his best, go and stay 
with him in his home in the country! There and 
then he is the best fellow imaginable, and you leave 
him and his home with respect, with affection, and 
with admiration. A third, and distinguishing feature 
is that Society is dominated by mascuhne not by 
feminine influence. 

The London season is from May till the grouse 
shooting begins in August. Why? asks every 
stranger who hits upon a dry and hot July in London. 
The reason is a very simple one: Men are shooting 
up to Christmas time, and then hunting after that. 
They will not live in London when sport is calling 
them to the country. In summer there is no shoot- 
ing and no hunting, but there are Parliament, polo, 
and cricket in London. Society meekly adapts it- 
self to the man's duties and diversions. 

At the risk of vain repetition I may not emphasize 
too often this preeminence of the man in England. 
We have noted it in other places, but it comes to the 
fore again even here. Society is so patently, even 
impertinently, for the women in America, that to the 
American it is with some awe that he sees even social 
matters dominated by and adjusted to, the conveni- 
ence and even to the whims of the men here. One 
may say humbly, and with apologies to his country- 
women, that this masculine dominance is not alto- 
gether a failure. It is perhaps old-fashioned, and 



312 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

due also to the refined feminine influences of one's 
past and present surroundings, but it never seems 
quite as though the social adjustment of things is 
right when woman becomes conspicuous, and cer- 
tainly not right or wise when she becomes the target 
for the camera and the paragraph. It is my humble 
belief that a woman cannot become "well known ''^ 
without becoming ipso facto too well known. 

It seems that Dame Nature by an iron law or- 
dained that the male bird should wear the brave and 
conspicuous plumage. Apparently when it is at- 
tempted to upset this world-old law of precedence, 
and the female is clothed in the plumage and per- 
quisites of the male, she fails. She all too often be- 
comes a cocotte in France, a divorcee in America. 
It somehow takes away from the fairest bloom of 
womanhood when she struts the stage of the world, 
when, spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ips<2. 
It is certainly not for their health, it may be doubted 
if it be for their happiness, to shift the burden of even 
social preeminence to the shoulders of women. 

It has come about in America by easy and natural 
stages. We have amassed in a few years great wealth 
l^with no traditions behind it and no weight of re- 
sponsibility upon it to keep it steady. It is too new 
to be left to take care of itself, and the energies of the 
men are devoted to keeping, controlling and adding 
to it. Very few of the men who have it, most of their 
fathers, and nearly all of their grandfathers, have, and 
had, no other resources. That is the only game they 
knew or know. But it must be spent. It cannot be 
said of us by our worst enemy that we Americans are 



SOCIETY 313 

misers. Palaces, and steam yachts, and motor cars, 
and equipages, clothes and pocket money are pro- 
vided for, or should one be more accurate in saying, 
piled upon, the women of these opulent ones. Many 
of the women in consequence are forced into being 
idle spendthrifts. 

There is no such outlet for voluntary work in 
America as in England. We have written in another 
chapter of the amount of unpaid political, charitable, 
educational, and other work done here by the men 
of the leisure classes. Many of these opportunities 
are also open to, and are taken advantage of, by the 
women. The wife and daughters of a rich man in 
England, with the church, the schools, the poor in the 
neighborhood of his estate, may find their hands full 
of work. It is not resented here, it is expected. In 
America, the schools, at any rate, are governed by 
the State, and idle ladies who should without tradi- 
tion and precedent behind them invade the precincts 
of the State-paid schoolmaster or schoolmistress 
would receive but a scant welcome. An idle man, 
whose thoughts and actions are continually driven 
back in and upon himself, is a pitiable object, and 
generally a physical and mental invalid before he is 
fifty. What of a woman under such circumstances ? 
Is it to be wondered at that she shirks what might be 
her only salvation — motherhood, and becomes with 
Satanic selfishness a peevish follower of her own 
whims? 

The English woman knows that tradition, the law, 
and Society, demand of her that she shall make a 
home for a man; the American woman has been led 



314 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

astray by force of circumstances into thinking that 
her first duty is to make a place for herself. Far be 
it from one who owes much, if not all, to an American 
mother and an American wife, to offer these conclu- 
sions as an attack. They are meant as an explana- 
tion of the unfortunate doings and wasted lives of 
only a small, very small, knot of women in America, 
but a company so highly-colored, so vociferous, and 
so advertised that they stamp themselves upon the 
superficial foreigner as being typical, when as a 
matter of fact they are merely hysterical. 

Wherever in the history of the world woman has 
assumed, or been accorded, this unfortunate and 
artificial prominence, it has meant decay. Aspasia 
was the tolling of the bell as manhood died in 
Greece; harlotry jn France has now a recognized 
place, with privileges unknown, and certainly un- 
recognized, amongst the fighting nations of the 
world; and let us be quite frank and admit what all 
the world thinks, that men who cannot and v/ill not 
fight are not men at all. Where the aesthetic is 
more cherished than the athletic, women may thrive 
but men decay. 

In America this deprivation of woman's true func- 
tion of the home keeper has been rudely and suddenly 
jarred and thrust on one side, but not, I believe, per- 
manently, by the idleness which often comes with un- 
expected and untraditioned wealth. 

**It is not death, but life that slays: 
The night less mountainously lies 
Upon our lips, than foolish days* 
Importunate futilities." 



SOCIETY 315 

It may be said that it is not entirely the fault of the 
women, or of the men, that this situation exists, and 
let me repeat that it applies only to a very small pro- 
portion of men and women in America, but we hap- 
pen to be dealing for the moment with that small 
number. The American is too much occupied with af- 
fairs to have time to spare for much social recreation; 
nor has he cultivated that facility in sympathy, in ex- 
pression, and in manner, which makes the artificiality 
of Society a comfortable relaxation for him. Our 
women are almost obliged to surround themselves 
with, and to use, for social purposes, either very young 
or inferior men. This is not good for women. Noth- 
ing a woman tires of so soon in a man as her own vir- 
tues and vices; nothing she so soon learns to despise 
in a man as her own methods of conquest. One may 
say, without much fear of intelligent contradiction, 
from either my countrymen or my countrywomen, 
that the male drawing-room notabilities in America 
are not of the type that one would care to increase, or 
to exhibit to the world, as typical of American man- 
hood. The men who have made America great at 
home, and respected abroad, would, alas, find little to 
interest them at our most widely advertised social 
functions. 

To a very large extent this is not true of English 
Society. The ablest and the most notable men from 
all walks of political, financial, literary, artistic and 
adventurous activity, find their way, at least from 
time to time, to English drawing-rooms and dinner 
tables. They go not only because they meet the 
fairest and most attractive women there, but because 



3i6 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

they meet men there of their own calibre. The wo- 
men provide the soft stuff in which delicate things may 
be packed together without breakage, they serve as 
agreeable and sophisticated buffers when people of 
different tastes, pursuits, and aptitudes come together. 
The ideal host is a woman not a man, whose sym- 
pathy and trained perceptions put conflicting and 
uneasy talents together, and make them forget their 
antagonisms. No man can do this as can a woman, 
and no woman learns the art who only deals with 
women or with inferior men. Men add a difficulty 
to social life, which improves it when it is overcome. 

Perhaps the most outstanding feature of social as of 
other phases of Hfe in England to an American is the 
fact that it is the man's code of ethics which obtains 
and not the woman's. A woman cannot claim a di- 
vorce on the ground of adultery alone. The offence 
must be accompanied by cruelty, or be committed 
so openly and frequently as to mean cruelty, before it 
becomes cause for separation or divorce. Divorce 
indeed is only for the rich, for those who can afford a 
prolonged and expensive legal battle. It is not for 
discussion here whether this is good or bad, but one 
may say as an American that the flings at American 
methods in such matters are hardly warranted. 

''In Divorce Court procedure there is now one law 
for the rich and another for the poor." From Sir J. 
Gorell Barnes's speech to Liverpool law students, 
February 5. 

"It is the serious reproach of our existing divorce 
laws that the relief they grant is practically out of the 
reach of the working classes in this country, by reason 



SOCIETY 317 

of expense and the absence of local courts empowered 
to grant it." From the judgment of Lord Justice 
Fletcher Moulton in the case of Harriman v. Ham- 
man, February 9. ,^. ■ a wir. 
Under the Summary Jurisdiction (Married Wo- 
men) Act of 1895 there were granted up to the end of 
1906, 72,537 separation orders. Seven thousand 
separations a year amongst this smaU population, or 
one to about every 540 of the population, is not a 
showing that would tempt any but the ignorant or 
the unthinking to hold up hands in pharisaic horror 
where other nations are concerned. 

The Enghshman looks at the whole matter, not 
from a logical or a highly ethical point of view, but 
from his usual makeshift common-sense point of view. 
He holds that a lapse from fidelity in a man does not 
destroy his usefulness, neither is it irretrievable; in a 
woman it may on the contrary interfere irretrievably 
with the rights of all others he holds most dear, the 
rights of succession and property. Failure to keep, 
his word or his contract, whether in gambling or com- 
merce, he refuses to forgive and punishes swiftly and 
surely both socially and legally, but infidelity he looks 
upon as unfortunate but not criminal. There have 
been many instances of politicians and statesmen 
notoriously unchaste, whose status in the service of 
the State and whose usefulness have not been in the 
least interfered with by that fact. One recalls the 
episode of poor King George, whose wife on her 
deathbed said to him: "You will marry again. 
"Ob no," whimpered the monarch, "J'aurai des 
maitresses!" " Mais ca n'emptehe pas," replied the 



3i8 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

Queen. "Depend upon it," said a French lady of 
the old regime, *'God Almighty thinks twice before 
he condemns persons of quality!" One is led to 
suspect that the great English church dignitaries, 
and other Enghsh moralists, have something of the 
same feehng. I find it hard to believe that the 
Archbishop of Canterbury vi^ould openly rebuke the 
reigning sovereign, or the heir to the throne, even 
though he were notoriously unfaithful. It must be 
with some sense of discomfiture, if not of shame, 
that the clergy rebuke gambling and unchastity 
amongst the lower orders, but never whisper dis- 
approval of these vices among the great. Even the 
great Churchmen are apparently believers in the 
doctrine of compromise. They preach that cautious 
Christianity which holds up an ideal for all, but ap- 
plies it as a rule only for some, and those the least 
conspicuous and the most amenable. These par- 
sons are on the side of the angels doubtless, but they 
seem very loath to do the devil any harm, when he 
appears in the garb and with the manners of a gentle- 
man. Logic, as we have seen, is not apphed to life. 
They have discovered that it is not workable. They 
hold that the Decalogue, for example, is in ten dif- 
ferent parts, and though one part be broken the rest 
may still be intact. Morals are not a jug, which if it 
have one hole is useless to carry water, but rather a 
platter, which though it be chipped and scratched 
may still serve to pass the loaf. They recognize that 
the bread of life itself is served on, and eaten from, 
some very disfigured platters, and that the world 
would starve even spiritually and morally if it were 



SOCIETY 319 

required that all platters should be without spot or 
nick. 

So long as such matters do not become the subject 
of public scandal, so long as a man is not dragged 
through the courts, little attention is paid to that 
phase of his private life. It is known to everybody; 
it is mentioned in public by nobody. It is not con- 
sidered prejudicial to a man's usefulness, and were a 
political opponent to use such weapons against a man 
he himself in all probability would be the sufferer. 

I need hardly call attention to the abysmal dif- 
ference in this particular between the masculine code 
which apphes in England and the feminine code 
which applies in America. One of the ablest and 
most useful chief magistrates we have had in America 
since Lincoln was nearly defeated when he was first 
a candidate for the Presidency by noxious stories 
about his private morals, and at that time he was a 
bachelor. His life and services proved beyond per- 
adventure how foolish and contemptible was the appli- 
cation of such standards of judgment. The Amer- 
ican politician of the small fry order has, however, 
played the cards of domesticity and a certain namby- 
pamby sentimentalism to the utmost limit of fanciful- 
ness. Behind the noise and confusion made about 
the seventh commandment the politician and political 
hanger-on have accomplished the most variegated 
and daring assaults upon the eighth commandment 
known to political history. The *'Thou shalt not" 
in the seventh is so vociferous that it is scarcely an 
audible whisper to the political conscience when it is 
pronounced in the eighth. 



320 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

Society, in the large sense and in the more re- 
stricted meaning of the word, is learning that a much 
advertised domestic felicity may be the home and 
hiding place of a set of burglar's tools. A man ought, 
of course, to be both clean in his private life and hon- 
est in his public life, but it is a pity to be fooled into 
such over-emphasis of the one that the other is for- 
gotten. A chaste thief is no better than a rake. 
There are probably more of the former, and fewer of 
the latter, in American than in English social and 
political life. 

It is not our business here, or the purpose of these 
pages, to enter upon an ethical discussion, or to ap- 
prove or to disapprove of either the English or the 
American code of morals, but merely to note the 
application and the differences, and if possible to 
offer some explanation of the whys and wherefores. 

It should be kept in mind that Society in England 
has a status of its own, is outlined in the Constitution 
itself, is prayed for by the priests of the National 
Church each Sunday, and that, therefore, a large 
number of persons are in Society by the law of the 
land and may not lightly be set aside even on account 
of moral delinquencies. 

It is, I believe, a popular notion that rules of pre- 
cedence are trivial regulations of temporary officials 
or chamberlains framed somewhat to suit their fancy. 
On the contrary, the law of precedence in England 
is as good a law as any other in Westminster Hall, 
and is established by Act of Parliament, The " Act 
for Placing the Lords" was passed by Parliament in 
the reign of Henry the Eighth, and even as early as 



SOCIETY 321 

1399 there was a regulation entitled "The Order of 
all Estates and Gentry of England." 

The English scale of precedence is curiously un- 
gallant in excluding the ladies. The wife of the^ 
Archbishop of Canterbury or of York or of a bishop 
has no place, possibly due to the fact that rules of 
precedence date from a time when Churchmen did 
not marry. It seems more than Britishly illogical and 
irrational in more ways than one that the wife of a 
saint should not receive her compensating reward in 
this world! But the same holds good of the wives of 
the Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor, the Speaker, 
Secretary of State, Privy Councillors, Chief Justices, 
and Judges — they none of them have any position 
guaranteed to them in the laws of precedence. An- 
other curious inconsistency is the fact that the eldest 
son of a younger son of a peer has a place, while the 
eldest son of the eldest son of a peer has no place. 

In Sir Roger de Coverley occurs the passage: "I 
have known my friend Sir Roger de Coverley's din- 
ner almost cold before the company could adjust the 
ceremonials of precedence and be prevailed upon ta 
sit down to table." 

A woman who has acquired a dignity by marriage 
loses that dignity on contracting a second marriage 
with a commoner. She may retain the title by the 
courtesy of Society, but she loses it by law. Indeed 
this particular phase of the law of precedence was 
carried into the courts by a certain titled lady who 
contracted a second marriage with a commoner, and 
was finally settled in the House of Lords, judgment 
being given against her. 



322 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

In a word, Society in one sense in England is part 
and parcel of the law of the land. " Precedence is not 
regulated by mere conventional arrangements; it is 
no fluctuating practice of fashionable life, the results 
of voluntary compacts in Society; but on the con- 
trary is part and parcel of the law of England," to 
quote from Dod. 

The Sovereign and the members of the Royal 
Family are the apex, not only of the Constitutional, 
but also of the social, structure of English Society. 
Next comes the Archbishop of Canterbury, then the 
Lord Chancellor, then the Archbishop of York. The 
Lord Chancellor's position between the two, is a 
compromise arranged after the days when the Lord 
Chancellor ceased to be a priest. The Lord High 
Treasurer, if he be a noble of high rank, follows after 
the Archbishops; so, too, the Lord President of the 
Council, the Lord Privy Seal, the Lord High Con- 
stable, the Lord Steward of the Household, and sev- 
eral other high officials, take precedence of the other 
dukes of England, provided they are dukes them- 
selves, by virtue of their office; but if they are not 
dukes then they take their place only at the head of 
other peers of the same degree as their own. With 
the exceptions of the Two Archbishops and the Lord 
Chancellor, the table of English precedence is one 
of personal not official rank. John Jones or Henry 
Brown may be Lord High Constable, or Lord Privy 
Seal, or the Lord Great Chamberlain, but nonethe- 
less the last created peer would take precedence of 
him, though probably in a public procession there 
would be no scuffling to assert one's self. It is much 



SOCIETY 323 

too long and intricate a matter to describe in detail, 
and the table of precedency may easily be found in 
any English almanac or year book, should the reader 
care to investigate for himself. Suffice it to say that 
after those mentioned come the Dukes according to 
the patent of their creation; eldest sons of Dukes of 
blood royal; Marquesses in the same order as Dukes; 
Dukes' eldest sons; Earls in same order as Dukes; 
younger sons of Dukes of royal blood; Marquesses' 
eldest sons; Dukes' younger sons; Viscounts in same 
order as Dukes; Earls' eldest sons; Marquesses' 
younger sons; the Bishops; Barons in the same order 
as Dukes; Speaker of the House of Commons; 
Treasurer of the King's Household; Comptroller of 
the King's Household; Vice-Chamberlain of the 
Household; Secretaries of State under the degree of 
Baron; Viscounts' eldest sons; Earls' younger sons; 
Barons' eldest sons; and so on, and so on, down to 
*^ Naval, Military, and other Esquires by office." 

As we have shown, women take the same rank as 
their husbands, or as their elder brothers. Daugh- 
ters of peers rank next immediately after the wives 
of their elder brothers, and before their younger 
brothers' wives. The daughter of a duke marrying a 
baron degrades to the rank of baroness only, while 
her sisters married to commoners retain their rank 
and take precedence of the baroness. On occasion 
an hostess might well require to have a brain of a high 
mathematical order, and much quickness and astute- 
ness, to marshal her guests in and out of the dining- 
room, with due regard to their social and official 
rights. 



324 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

The outline of these matters given here is merely 
to impress upon the reader that there is a mould in 
England for social life. There is a certain class 
which dominates by right of birth, tradition, and 
wealth, and there are certain fixed rules of the game 
which are as much the law of the land as any other 
law. To the American at any rate, this puts another 
face on the problem. He must look at it with these 
differences well in mind, and interpret it according 
to its own rules and precedents. The wayward and 
vague criticism of ignorance, or the parochial meth- 
ods of those who apply the standard of a limited ex- 
perience to social affairs totally different from any- 
thing they know, only bring discontent, bitterness 
and teach nothing. 

Radicalism in England, whether social, political, 
or literary, was for a long time only a costume and a 
way of wearing the hair; it is now a philosophy with 
considerable political and some social power. It is 
not, however, of the integral tone and temper of the 
English people. America, on the other hand, has 
been from the first an experiment in radicalism. Not 
to be a radical is not to be an American. One may 
be by birth an American, but still not be in any 
patriotic or political sense an American. The Amer- 
ican is not merely watching, he is, or ought to be, 
taking part in the attempt of a people to govern 
themselves, and to give big and little, high and low, 
educated and uneducated, as nearly as may be equal 
opportunities. 

It becomes a simple matter to mark off the dif- 
ferences which should distinguish such a Society, 



SOCIETY 325 

whether we take the word as meaning the whole 
people or accept the narrower meaning thereof, from 
Society under monarchical rules and customs. 

Simplicity, not ostentation, must be the supreme 
virtue in such a community. In England men of 
wealth and position feel it incumbent upon them to 
emphasize their position by a certain splendor of liv- 
ing. In America, to emphasize such things is to 
controvert and deny the value of the main lines of 
growth of American civilization. The Englishman 
hands down from father to son a position and a set- 
ting which each feels it incumbent upon him not as a 
fashion but as a duty to maintain. It may be said 
to their credit that in the main this has been an aris- 
tocracy born to duties first, to privileges afterward, 
and it is because, with of course the black sheep ex- 
ceptions, they have lived up to this standard that they 
still hold the place and power they do. 

But the American who surrounds himself with a 
superfluity of uniformed menials with bulging calves 
and powdered heads is simply framing a picture of 
life entirely inappropriate to the history, precedents, 
and raison d'etre of his country. 

The recent discussions about more money for our 
ambassadors seem to omit the pith of the problem, 
which is, that our ambassadors are not in Europe to 
play up to a king or to an aristocracy, but to represent 
the American people. When our ambassadors need 
a score of flunkies to make a setting for their diplo- 
matic mission, they no longer represent America. 
Franklin, Jay, Bayard, Lowell, and Choate impres- 
sed these sensible English people more, and be it said 



326 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

some of them did far more for their country's honor, 
peace and prosperity than any miUionaire ambassa- 
dor could do. A big house does not represent Amer- 
ica, but sturdy simphcity, ability, and the good man- 
ners of a kind heart do, and so far as my experience 
goes, we have been fortunate thus far in being repre- 
sented by men of that type in England. At the time 
of this writing, America is honored in the persons of 
her present ambassador and his chief of staff by their 
representation of the very best qualities of America's 
best type of citizen. 

In noting these differences, and in calling attention 
to the fact that there is a constitutional framework 
bolted together by the laws of the land itself, for the 
reception and the moulding of society, it must not be 
understod for a moment that this is Society. There 
are Dukes and Dukes, Marquesses and Marquesses, 
Earls and Earls, and they are no more all alike, or all 
of the same social or political position, or importance, 
than are the same number of butchers and bakers. 
That an Englishman by right of birth and hereditary 
dignity is a part of the social framework, does not 
mean that he plays a part in Society, or is even ad- 
mitted within its portals. His birth and title give him 
a distinct advantage, but they are by no means open 
sesame. 

On the contrary, the outstanding social figure of the 
early part of the Last century was a man whose grand- 
mother was a lady's maid, whose mother was reputed 
to have been Lord North's mistress, and who made 
his mark in the Society of the day by patronizing 
royalty, bullying the nobihty, and insulting his equals. 



SOCIETY 327 

It must have been rather a dull Society which suffered 
Beau Brummel for any length of time. It always has 
been rather an easily amused Society, and is so to-day. 
The men are out-door men, many of them hungry 
and tired by eight P. M., preferring physical rather 
than mental sensations. The two popular stage 
sensations of the late season, much discussed even 
by serious men, and patronized by both the smart and 
the great, were two unclothed women, one interpret- 
ing Chopin with her legs, the other representing 
Buddha with her hips. They were curiously enough 
both Americans, and I could not help thinking that 
they must both have died of laughter had they been 
provided with sleeves to laugh in. To see an Eng- 
lish Prime Minister assiduously offering his social 
patronage to a provider of this quality of entertain- 
ment is a feature of English life which leaves the 
Frenchman, the American, and the German with a 
bewildering sense that he is either mad or blind. 

There is, however, a feature of English social life 
which makes it interesting even despite itself. Eng- 
land is an Empire. She has men fighting, travelling, 
exploring, governing and acting as her diplomatic 
agents in every comer of the world. These men come 
and go through London, and it is a rare dinner party, 
or drawing-room function where one or more men 
are not present who offer variety and interest as a 
mere result of their experiences. They supply the 
something new and fresh, ^vithout which any Society 
becomes a very dull meeting of the same people over 
the same bowl of gossip. 

As in other walks in life here, competition is keen. 



328 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

Lady A., or Lady B., or Mrs. Jones, or Mrs. White, 
could neither attract nor compel people to their 
houses night after night to meet over and over again 
a few men and women drawn always from the same 
knot of playmates. Just to be seen at Lady A.'s, or 
at Mrs Jones's would tempt nobody after a certain 
time. London is far too full of interesting things to 
do, lively people to meet, and an unending variety of 
social and other amusements, to make it worth any- 
body's while to be entertained always in the same 
way by the same small knot of people. 

He must be very difficult to amuse or interest who 
finds time hanging heavy upon his hands in London. 
Of a morning he may ride or watch the riders in Hyde 
Park. Sunday after church he may see a procession 
of all the social notabilities of the season again in 
Hyde Park. Sunday afternoon he may stroll about 
Tattersall's and see English men and women in their 
worship of the Horse. With a taxi-cab he may get 
to a different golf-course every day for a month, and 
none of them bad. There is cricket at Lord's and 
the Oval. There is polo at Ranelagh, Roehampton 
and Hurlingham. There are numberless excursions 
on the Thames in an electric launch, or he may wield 
the oars or punt himself. He may have the box seat, 
or, if he be proficient with the reins, take the cushion 
himself for a drive on the coach to half a dozen or 
more different places. 

There is lawn tennis at the Queen's Club, and real 
tennis there and at Prince's, and he must be friendless 
indeed if he have not a friend to introduce him at one 
or the other or both of these clubs. The English 



SOCIETY 329 

dubs are friendliness itself, and again he may find 
any one of half a dozen open to him if he prove him- 
self a clubable person. 

If he cares for more serious things, I defy him to 
find more courtesy anywhere than will be his portion 
as a guest of the powers that be at the British Mu- 
seum, where quiet, capable servants, and one of the 
great libraries of the world are put at his disposal. 
The Tate Gallery, the Wallace Collection, the Na- 
tional Gallery, and the National Portrait Gallery are 
delightful places to idle in and to recreate one's be- 
lief in English art after an hour at the Royal Academy 
— at any rate the Royal Academy of the last two 
years. He can hardly stay long in England without 
making friends, and then he may see many of the 
private collections of pictures, porcelains, and his- 
torical treasures in some of the great houses in and 
about London. If he cares to see the law courts, 
the police courts, or to visit the great universities, 
or the House of Commons, or the House of Lords I 
can only say from personal experience that there will 
be no lack of hospitality shown him, and nothing 
spared to satisfy any legitimate curiosity or interest. 

On one of my own frequent visits to the House of 
Commons, the member who introduced me carried 
his hospitality to the limit of himself "heckling" a 
Cabinet Minister, and then making a half-hour 
speech, whether solely for my entertainment or not I 
cannot say. 

I have often hunted from London, and very com- 
fortably too; and if one cares for racing, there is 
scarcely a day during the racing season when one may 



330 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

not travel down to a race meeting, and be back in time 
for dinner. The National Sporting Club has capital 
sparring exhibitions every Monday night of its sea- 
son, and sometimes oftener. 

Indeed, a man must go out of his way to choose an 
amusement or an interest that may not be his for the 
asking. It must have been an effeminate American 
who remarked that all good Americans go to Paris 
when they die. Paris may be a good place to go if 
one is dead or decrepit, or if one loves no more virile 
exercise than that taken on the cushions of an auto- 
mobile, but men who are alive and well would prefer 
London. It is not to be wondered at then that if 
these be a few of the interests open to the stranger 
the Londoner finds too many distractions to permit 
any tread-mill social requirements to curtail his com- 
ings and goings. 

Although snubbing and climbing, jealousy and 
malice, play their part here as elsewhere, the social 
status of many is so assured that they need not, and 
do not, attend much to what is brought them, or 
taken from them by their social companions. There 
is an ease of manner, a simplicity of speech and bear- 
ing, a lack of effort, which are, I take it, the result of 
this social stability. But this is true only of the best 
and the highest placed classes in England. Amer- 
ica is not alone the home of social awkwardness. The 
laborious gentility, the careful speech, the pose of 
being at home, ses nonchalances qui sont les plus 
grands artifices, are painfully apparent amongst Eng- 
lish men and women, who are striving to appear what 
they are not, or who are out and out ''bounders." 



SOCIETY 331 

The natural shyness, and slowness, and lack of adapt- 
ability of the race come out with mortifying distinct- 
ness when the English undertake to play a social part 
which is a bit above their station. 

Those who have suffered socially, financially, or 
morally, the frayed, the failed, and the flayed, are 
more horribly conspicuous in their efforts to appear 
at ease here than anywhere else. The others appear 
all the more serene and confident by comparison. 
These latter worry very little over questions of whe- 
ther they profit or not by being seen in this cofnpany 
or that, and as a consequence the same general law 
which welcomes prowess wherever it appears in Eng- 
land applies to that microcosm of life called Society. 
Ability, success, wealth, provided they be amenable 
to the manners, speech, and to that curious cate- 
gorical imperative of the etiquette of the day and 
generation, go where they please and outdistance 
easily the mere holders of titles, no matter what they 
be. I have all through these pages made it a law not 
to mention names, or to refer to personal experiences, 
otherwise one might easily offer instance after in- 
stance, and example after example, of the truth of 
this. Every Englishman knows — the American 
must accept it without proof — members of the no- 
bility, from dukes down, who are hopelessly left out 
in social matters. The genuine democratic instinct 
of the people makes itself felt even in the limited 
companies of which we are writing. Not even the 
King himself can assure the election of a "bounder'* 
to a club or reestablish a damaged duke or earl, or 
demand and be accorded entrance and entertainment 



332 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

in certain great houses for his friends. No English- 
man living knows the English, however, better than 
the present occupant of the throne, and he rarely 
makes blunders of a social or diplomatic description. 
Indeed, no ruler in Europe, or anywhere else, makes 
so few. While of the Queen, one is not exaggerating, 
or mawkish, in saying that she is not only popular 
but the darling of the people, high and low alike. 

Even in Society a man must do something, be 
something, to hold his place or to get a footing. It 
begins at school where the boys must devote them- 
selves to one or another game. It is not a matter of 
choice. They are impelled to it, not only by the 
authorities, but by the even more rigorous laws of the 
boys themselves. One must be a "wet-bob" or a 
"dry-bob." One must row, or play cricket, or foot- 
ball, one or the other, but play and play hard they 
must. They believe in concentration and hardness. 
" Virescit vulnere virtus^^ is the motto of both masters 
and boys. This education, like hfe, is terrible for the 
feeble, but splendid for the strong. Nicholson, Bur- 
ton, Palmer, Gordon, Cromer, Kitchener, Curzon, 
Milner, Rhodes, Roberts, and hundreds more, less 
conspicuous, but all heroic servants of England are 
the result of this policy — even the stranger knows 
their names and their services. Lord Roberts, an 
old man then, and grieving for the loss of his only son, 
when asked to go to Africa replied: "I have been 
keeping myself fit in case of such an emergency!" 

This training in their youth has much to do, I be- 
lieve, with the almost universal reticence of manner 
and of speech among the better classes. Boasting, 



SOCIETY 333 

"bucking" as they call it, talking of one's self, of 
what one has, of what one has done, is seldom or 
never heard. It is with much difficulty that you can 
get even an account of first-rate deeds out of first-rate 
men. Men never wear buttons or orders or advertise 
their distinctions. They hate uniforms, and shed 
them as though they carried disease whenever their 
duties no longer require them. 

We are a more voluble and peacocky people. We 
spread such tails as we have, rather too often perhaps. 
Men of merely formal rank love the titles of ''Gen- 
eral'' or "Colonel" or "Captain." Others adorn 
their buttonholes with orders of foreign wars, or other 
conflicts, who have never left their native shores and 
never seen a gun fired in actual warfare. These are 
trifling displays of a certain sort of theatrical vanity 
that do little harm, but the lack of self-control, the 
lack of personal dignity which such small vanities 
imply may in larger matters do great harm. 

A certain Cabinet Minister, after the death of the 
late Prime Minister, made a deplorable speech in 
the House of Lords. The poor man was evidently, 
but quite unknown to his colleagues, on the verge of 
a mental collapse. No word of that scene was heard 
outside the chamber. No reporter, no servant, no 
member, betrayed the lamentable breakdown of the 
offender. What splendid magnanimity, and court- 
esy, that implied. Can any people be the better if 
in the evening every newspaper in the land is shout- 
ing the details of such an incident through the streets 
by the raucous voices of its distributers? 

Liberty I would have, yes, and light upon dark 



334 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

places where plots against the people are hatched, but 
I would have justice and courteous reticence too. 
One of the great defenders of the American people in 
their days of infancy, Burke, wrote: "Wherever a 
separation is made between liberty and justice neither 
is in my opinion safe." It is never just to be cruel. 
It is the weak, the uncontrolled men in any com- 
munity, in any country, who through vanity, or love 
of notoriety throw their own and other people's dig- 
nity to the winds. 

It is a strange word, and I know little of its ety- 
mological ancestry, but it conveys so definite a per- 
sonality to my mind, that I shall use it in the hope 
that my contemporaries appreciate the nice shades of 
meaning it conveys. The word is Nincompoop. 
There is no place for this creature in either English 
life, or in that particular essence of Enghsh life — 
English Society. Bad men there are, and women of 
the type of that acquaintance of Boswell of whom 
Dr. Johnson said: "Sir, I think your lady is very fit 
for a brothel.'^ The rules and the curiosities of the 
laws of Society are as strange and as difficult to define 
here as elsewhere. They call the chess-board white, 
they call it black, as Browning says, but why, no 
man knows. 

But be they bad or good, no man is suffered long, 
no man holds his place, who does not do something. 
Even Beau Brummel was the most finished social 
bully of his day. Even the English themselves scarce 
reahze how often they ask the question, "What has 
he done?" The women ask it, the men ask it. 
One would expect that question in a democracy rather 



SOCIETY 335 

than here. "Who was his father?" or '^Whom did 
he marry?" or "How did he make his money?" are 
familiar questions asked about new-comers in Amer- 
ica. This English society still intuitively and in- 
stinctively asks the question, the answer to which 
/throughout their history has been the key to unlock 
every door, whether political or social. Above all 
things, if the new man has done something for Eng- 
land, his place is assured, and his reward little short 
of munificent. And if a man be born to a high social 
position all the more is expected of him, and if he does 
not live up to the standard, he is even more an out- 
cast than is one whose social birthright is accom- 
panied by few responsibilities. Their great nobles 
are great by reason of their duties and responsibilities. 
An idle, or a vicious bearer of a great name, is more 
conspicuously ignored than a commoner of the same 
calibre. 

It goes almost without saying that much of the talk 
about Society here or in America is purely fantastic 
and imaginary. Much of the writing about Society 
in America is merely silly, when it is not of the Fire- 
side Companion quality, adopted by the socialist to 
advertise his wares. Society in America is awkward, 
but it is not vicious. Many rich people do not know 
what to do with their money, just as the yokel in the 
drawing-room does not know what to do with his 
hands. As Clement of Alexandria phrased it nearly 
two thousand years ago, so the situation is not new: 
"Riches wriggling in the grasp of the inexperienced." 

The most obvious things about Society, whether 
English or American, is that its behavior is so correct, 



336 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

its morals so good. When one remembers that 
Society, at any rate in America, is so largely com- 
posed of the unemployed rich, with money, leisure, 
and constant temptation, Society compares very 
favorably indeed with any other section of the popu- 
lation. That the wealthy leisure class is no worse 
than the hard-working poorer classes is surprising 
after all. There is less drunkenness, less wife-beat- 
ing, less murder and assault in the West End than in 
the East End, and when one realizes that money and 
idleness are more common in the West End than in 
the East, this is a matter for congratulation. It is the 
cheaper newspapers, not the people themselves, that 
are bad. The thousands of readers who pore over 
the doings of Society would mob the newspaper 
offices if they knew how dull and commonplace are 
the heroes and heroines of the comedy, and how 
bored they often are with themselves and one an- 
other. The sins of Society are only the sins of the 
slums gilded. Adultery, stealing, drunkenness, syco- 
phancy, are much alike and seldom romantic, where- 
ever we find them. Society is used by the newspapers 
as a sort of continuous side show. The Bearded 
Lady, the Skeleton Man, the Giant, and the Dwarf 
are really impostures, but the gullible public are kept 
in the dark, and not allowed to know that the Wild 
Man of Borneo is only a tattooed medical student, 
who will return, in due time, to resume his chosen 
studies. If Society were really occupied in hard 
drinking, in participation in voluptuous entertain- 
ments, in orgies of expenditure, in the suppression of 
childbirth, and at the same time indulging amongst 



SOCIETY 337 

one another in the desultory amativeness of Austra- 
lian rabbits, Society would be rather exciting — 
which of all things it is not. The newspapers, and a 
few irresponsible writers, are the self-instituted pro- 
prietors of this collection of freaks which they call 
Society, and by means of cheap paper and the ex- 
traordinary development of the printing press, they 
give exhibitions daily in every city, town, and hamlet 
in America. They know very well that the Bearded 
Lady's beard, and the Wild Man from Borneo's skin, 
cannot be inspected closely by the audience, and so 
they riot fearlessly in their descriptions. But there 
has been nothing in heaven or earth, or the waters 
under the earth, since Barnum died, which at all 
resembles what they picture. 

Of our ninety millions of people, the large ma- 
jority are hard workers, clean in their living, eco- 
nomical in expenditure, and scrupulously honest in 
their dealings. The newspapers amuse them with 
pictures of a pronounced melodramatic order labelled 
Society. All the things they do not do, and do not 
have, are represented to be the daily provender of 
these morally amorphous beings. To them, it is 
inferred, dollars are as doughnuts, champagne is as 
well-water, and when they are not being fined for the 
excessive speed of their motor cars in one court, they 
are being divorced in another, or buying up bucolic 
magistrates, to remarry them in another. 

It is only where intelligent people treat such hum- 
bug seriously that harm is done, or when an official, 
or a writer, for revenue or for advertisement, pretends 
to believe these tales and makes capital out of them. 



338 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

that class may be set against class, and real trouble 
follow. The only effective criticism that can be 
passed upon people, is to be better than they are. 
Exploiting the weaknesses, and exaggerating the foi- 
bles of any class of one's countrymen is not a man's 
task. It is easy to play upon the credulity of a sim- 
ple people, and simple people living far from this 
madding crowd may be excused for being deceived; 
but our more intelligent and more experienced people 
at home and the same class in England must be 
dubbed stupid when they accept such descriptions 
and, alas, mit der Dummheit kdmpfen Gotter selbst 
vergebens. 

It is necessarily true that in a country, as in Eng- 
land, where social functions may be said to be, some 
of them at least, a part of the machinery of govern- 
ment, and where many others are avowedly for politi- 
cal purposes, the ends and aims of Society's doings 
are more clear and more dignified than in a Society, 
as in America — outside of the political doings of 
Society in Washington — where apparently the end 
is amusement only and the aim diversion. 

Lady Palmerston was a great political hostess, and 
credited even with keeping her husband in power. 
The great nobles with great houses in London who 
entertain the King of Spain at a ball, or the colonial 
visitors at a reception, or the Church Congress at a 
reception, do so as a public duty. No one in London 
imagines for a moment that such entertainments are 
given to enhance their social standing, or that such 
entertainments can be other than rather tiresome 
functions to the host and hostess, however smiling 



SOCIETY 339 

and amiable they may appear when you make your 
bow to them. Such entertainments are undertaken 
as a patriotic duty. Until comparatively recent 
years, the House of Commons was rightly named the 
best club in London. Its members were drawn 
largely from the same class from which the members 
of Society are drawn. Though this has greatly 
changed, noticeably so since the last general election, 
there is still a pronounced flavor of politics in Society, 
and of Society in politics. This gives Society a cer- 
tain consistency, a, certain seriousness, a certain ex- 
cuse for being. All sets, the "smart," the "fashion- 
able," the "conservative," the artistic and literary — 
and Society divides into groups along these general 
lines — are, from the very fact that their members 
and their families and friends are of the official gov- 
erning class, interested in politics. Indeed one might 
say that while Society's vocation is amusement, its 
avocation is politics. Here again the fact that poli- 
tics, domestic and Imperial, are concentrated in Lon- 
don during a few months in the year explains to the 
American how this can be so. This political — using 
the word in a broad sense — atmosphere of social 
life in England is a very marked feature to an Amer- 
ican. At luncheons, at dinners, during a call at tea- 
time, even at garden parties, the interest is either 
sport or politics or both. 

Racing in England is a veritable obsession. It not 
only engrosses the entire attention of many dis- 
tinguishedly "smart" members of Society, it is one 
of the serious occupations of a number of the great 
nobles of the country, and the betting side of it per- 



340 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

meates to every hole and corner of English life. One 
need not be an over observant student of English 
life to note that a lion and a horse with a horn on its 
forehead uphold the English shield — and that St. 
George of England, though he was a pork butcher, 
is astride a horse as he kills the dragon. One may 
say with some truth that "smart" Society in England 
revolves around the King and the horse. There is, 
however, a conservative, wealthy, tradition-loving 
section of Society, represented, let us say, by the 
Duchess of Buccleuch, which, though representing 
Society as much as others, have little more in com- 
mon with those above-mentioned than has the Bishop 
of London with the secretary of the Jockey Club. 

There is a difference between threads which inter- 
lace and threads which tie together, and this may 
serve as illustrating the relations of the different 
groups of English Society to one another. They all 
interlace, but they do not all tie together. They 
cross but they do not knot. 

I have no mandate, and no taste, for the task of 
cataloguing names, of retailing scandal, of hinting at 
rumors. No one can live among friendly people 
without hearing, and seeing, and knowing what it 
must be a point of honor not to reveal. The broad 
outlines are quite enough to teach all that it can pro- 
fit others to learn. The squalid, foul-mouthed, and 
mean-spirited chronicling of the weaknesses of men 
and women, whether they be placed low or high in 
social rank, can never be the business of one who 
studies other countries, or loves his own. 

"To be honest, to be kind — to earn a little and to 



SOCIETY 341 

spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family 
happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall 
be necessary and not to be embittered, to keep a few 
friends, but these without capitulation — above all, 
on the same grim condition, to keep friends with him- 
self — here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude 
and delicacy. ... In his own life then a man is not 
to expect happiness, only to profit by it gladly when 
it shall arise; he is on duty here; he knows not how 
or why, and does not need to know; he knows not 
for what hire, and must not ask. Somehow or other, 
though he does not know what goodness is, he must 
try to be good; somehow or other, though he cannot 
tell what will do it, he must try to give happiness to 
others." An Englishman wrote that, and from the 
days of Sir Philip Sidney all through the years till 
now, there have been Englishmen who have faced life 
in that way. The names of many of those gentlemen 
we know, and their deeds and their fame we know, 
and we, English and Americans alike, cherish their 
memories as a joint heritage. There are many such 
in both countries to-day. Society is not composed 
entirely of such here or elsewhere, but it is not alto- 
gether lacking in either men or women who wear the 
amulet of chivalry, even in these prosaic days. 



CONCLUSION 

IT will be a disappointing miscarriage of the 
author's intention if these pages merely serve 
to ruffle the feelings of the English, and to make 
Americans more carelessly confident. Both nations 
have something to learn of one another, and England 
being so much the older country her experiments, 
her failures and her successes have the advantage of 
the searching test of time — and certainly time is 
either the father or mother of truth. One is loath to 
accept new social or political policies too readily; 
one is equally loath to discard methods that have 
endured the strain of centuries. 

The American who learns nothing from a study of 
the English people cannot be said to aid much in the 
solution of his own country's problems. 

First I put their respect for the law, their law-abid- 
ingness, and their hearty approval of swift justice, 
illustrated over and over again in the foregoing pages. 
In a country where political assassins, financial buc- 
caneers and wealthy law-breakers generally, may, 
and sometimes do, thread the courts of justice as in a 
maze till patience is exhausted and escape all too 
often made possible, there is still something to learn 
from the English. He is either blind, or a traitor to 
his country, who does not see this and proclaim it. 
That we have many races to deal with makes the 

342 



CONCLUSION 343 

situation more difficult, but should not in the least 
interfere with our aim and our steady progress toward 
reform. 

The reticence, the self-control, the even temper of 
the English, high and low alike, irritate the American 
often enough, when they should, on the contrary, 
teach him the value of these things. 

The homogeneity of the people, and the resultant 
good feeling and fairness on both sides; the whole- 
ness of the nation, the interlacing of the classes, which 
result in the sturdiest kind of patriotism, verging 
though it does at times to the side of commercial 
selfishness, are well worth imitating. 

The enormous amount of unpaid and voluntary 
service to the State, and to one's neighbors, in Eng- 
land, results in the solution of one of the most harass- 
ing problems of every wealthy nation, it arms the 
leisure classes with something worthy, something im- 
portant to do. Not only their willingness to accept, 
but their insistence upon, the duty owed to the nation 
by'the rich and the educated has, I believe, more than 
anything else, given them the long lead in national 
predominance that they have held until lately. When 
a man has made wealth and leisure for himself, or in- 
herited them from others, he is deemed a renegade if 
he does not promptly offer them as a willing sacrifice 
upon the altar of his country's welfare. There is no 
blinking the truth that these people have not only an 
unequalled training for governing, which begins as 
far back as the Sixth form of their public schools, but 
they have an instinct for it. The sober, slow, even 
temper, fits them for the task. They govern relent- 



344 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

lessly, but confidently and fairly. They govern by 
law, not by autocratic methods, and they govern al- 
ways with the aim of increasing, not decreasing, the 
personal freedom of the governed. They govern to 
the glory of England, not to exploit themselves. 
They know that the long years of expatriation and 
obscurity, if crowned by success, will be amply, even 
splendidly, rewarded. 

England dangles the costliest prizes that are given 
to men anywhere in the world before the eyes of her 
citizens. High rank and great fortunes are offered 
to any man who distinguishes himself in her service. 
What England would have given Washington, and 
Franklin, and Hamilton, and Grant, and Lee, and 
Jackson, and Sherman, and Lincoln, and © lnwc^ i afid , 
Taft, and Magoon, and others, had they been servants 
of hers, one hesitates for fear of exaggeration to say. 
The head of their church, the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, is paid $75,000 a year; the Archbishop of York, 
$50,000; the Bishop of London, $50,000; the Lord 
High Chancellor, $50,000; the Lord Lieutenant of 
Ireland, $100,000; the Lord Mayor of London, 
$50,000; the Head Masters of their great Public 
Schools are said to make, if they have a house, as 
much as from $25,000 to $40,000; their ambassadors 
to the great Powers receive the equivalent of $50,000; 
and the men who conquer and control for them in 
their colonies are rewarded as we have seen. Bear 
in mind, too, that any man may come to the front in 
England, whatever his origin. Kitchener and Rob- 
erts worked their way up from the bottom. Cham- 
berlain and Asquith, Lloyd George, Haldane and 



CONCLUSION 345 

others, do not belong by birth to the governing class 
and the same may be said of hundreds more, now con- 
spicuous in England's service. These prizes are not 
for a select few. They are impartially distributed. 
There you have. the soundest philosophy, and the 
most generous and fairest practice of democracy in 
the world to-day. Their method is not to pull every 
man down to a barren equality, but to push every 
man up to a brave ideal. 

Ill-gotten wealth, misused power, a weakly wielded 
inheritance, receive little homage in England. We 
sometimes make mistakes about them in that matter, 
and call them snobs. It is true they love a lord, and 
cringe to wealth and power, but this homage is wide- 
spread and a part of the national character, because 
at bottom they expect much, and have so often re- 
ceived much, from rank, and wealth, and power. 

There were fifteen hundred Etonians serving in the 
Boer war, and one hundred and fifty of them lost 
their lives. Probably a nearly similar proportion was 
furnished from other schools according to their size, 
Eton being the largest public school in England. 
There is something to be said even for their love of a 
lord if they receive fair value for their loyalty, and it 
must be said that when the pinch comes the English 
noble and the English gentleman have always lived 
up to their obligations. 

This accounts for the fact that in this country of 
constitutionally fixed class distinctions there is so Httle 
class feeling. The Russian noble, instigating a war 
to save a commercial concession and accompanied to 
the battlefield by champagne and mistresses, has no 



346 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

parallel here. They have their faults and their black 
sheep, but their faults and weaknesses are not those 
of feline effeminacy. 

The hundred years of republican government in 
France and America, diversified in France by autoc- 
racy and monarchy, have had little effect upon them. 
Indeed, monarchy was never more popular in Eng- 
land than to-day. Even the new temper, which is 
pushing the State on to become a grandmotherly 
guardian of the people, makes but slow progress. 
Shorter hours for labor, a minimum wage. State 
insurance, the pensioning of the aged, the free feed- 
ing of school children, and the taxing of incomes 
upon a scale upwards, are new to England. 

In spite of the demagogue — and the demagogue 
is having his day in England just now — the people 
seem to have a stability of common-sense which is 
even more valuable than a training in economics. 
Leisure, which shorter hours imply, has no value in 
and of itself. More people misuse it than profit by 
it, to whatever class they belong. Leisure is the tag 
of the classes — of the rich, of the great — so foolish 
people think at least, and therefore they demand it 
as one of the perquisites of equality. Leisure in 
reality is nothing of the kind. Leisure is the residu- 
um of economy. All men may have it, and all eco- 
nomical men, whatever their work, do have it. Leis- 
ure is, and always has been, the reward of economical 
men. Many idle men never have it. Shorter hours 
do not produce it, pensions do not produce it. The 
only thing that produces leisure is work, and hard, 
painful work at that. You cannot dodge pain as 



CONCLUSION 347 

part of the heritage of mankind — you may perhaps 
change the kind. It would make us all soft if you 
could. Some men will always have to have their legs 
cut off as a result of unavoidable accident, or as a 
result of courage that could not be denied; all you 
can do is to discover, and to use anaesthetics and to 
some extent relieve the pain of the operation, but no 
State controlled by mortal man will ever make acci- 
dents, disease and suffering impossible. The per- 
manent destiny of mankind is to work, and to some 
extent to suffer, and the less work the more suffering. 

It is the ghastly portent of the time that social and 
political forces are demanding that men should work 
less instead of planning to make it wholesome for 
them to work more. Work, and nothing else and 
nothing less, is man's salvation. 

It is easy to see how this new doctrine has arisen. 
As the belief in the supernatural, or to put it in the 
common parlance of the street, the belief in God, has 
grov/n less strong, there has come a preposterous be- 
lief in man, a deification of men. Men have trans- 
ferred their allegiance and their thoughts from God 
to man. The Channing school of Unitarianism in 
New England, which revolted from the exaggerated 
orthodoxy of Jonathan Edwards, and the philosophy 
of Comte in France, are organized illustrations of the 
better side of this change. But this refinement has 
percolated down through the masses in the coarse 
form of a mere vulgar and frankly selfish socialism. 
Man is to be the god, and as such is to be worshipped, 
provided for, and exalted. The fundamental phil- 
osophy underlying all forms of socialism, disguise it 



348 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

as you will, is the worship of man. The pandering 
to this new doctrine in the name of Christian social- 
ism is simply loose-mindedness. The pith of Chris- 
tianity and the pith of socialism are as the poles apart. 
But the pupit has its demagogues, and its opportun- 
ists, no less than the forum. This diluted Christian- 
ity, which accepts the doctrines whilst waiving the 
obligations, is nowadays dubbed manly. Manly 
merely because it sides with man against God; but 
could anything be less so? It sugars the penalties, 
softens the warnings, emasculates the command- 
ments, and all to please the mob; not to harden them, 
not to inspire them, not to lift them, but to throw their 
thoughts back upon themselves. Christianity is at 
least virile enough to crucify its God, and to announce 
that pain points the way to salvation. This new god 
is to be fed and educated for nothing as a child; is to 
work only eight hours a day as an adult; is to be pen- 
sioned at seventy, and never to bear a cross, much less 
be nailed upon one, if by any means it can be avoided. 
We in America are only just recovering from an 
epigram which held that labor should not be crucified. 
The only labor that counts for any thing in the world 
has always been, and always will be, born of pain. 
That is its glory. The nearer labor comes to being 
a sacrifice of self, the nearer the laborer comes to be- 
ing a hero and a saint. Labor is dignified only when 
it ceases to watch the clock, and when duty calls is 
willing to bear a cross. Wherever and whenever the 
individual, or any class in the community, whether 
rich or poor, balks at labor, at pain, at sacrificcj 
at the cross in short, you have in that individual and 



CONCLUSION 349 

in that class a menace to the community and to the 
State. And it is this very individual, and this same 
class, that the professional philanthropist, the political 
and economic sentimentalist, is doing his best to en- 
courage. There is no surer, no shorter way to mur- 
der the State than to keep such as these alive. This 
new doctrine, that at all hazards men must live, is a 
pagan doctrine, and bad morality and bad economics 
as well. It was a French judge who met the issue 
as it should be met. The prisoner before him charged 
with stealing bread said: "Ma foi, il faut vivre!" 

" Je ne vois pas la necessite!" replied the judge. 

I have no intention of sermonizing, or of straying 
from the subject. I have tried briefly to describe a 
prevalent philosophy of the day which enlists dema- 
gogues, opportunists, and, in the case of France at any 
rate, practically dominates the situation. There can 
be no question of her decadence as a result of this, 
which shows itself clearly in the departments of in- 
dustry, a.nd of commercial and mercantile enterprise. 
It is said by an authority on the subject that this is 
the fundamental evil, viz., "the colossally dispro- 
portionate proportion of the number of officials main- 
tained by the Stated This develops a mentality 
characterizing not only the whole official world, but 
those connected with officials, and those who hope 
to become officials. Their minds become torpid, 
they are exhausted by the least effort on their own 
behalf. In a word they are emasculated. All these 
superfluous officials instead of being citizens who 
produce, are parasites and consumers. At the end 
of the Empire these people numbered less than two 



350 



ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 



hundred and fifty thousand. Between January first, 
1906, and January first, 1907, they have increased by 
two hundred thousand, and before long they will 
number a million, out of the total population of 
France of 38,000,000. One man out of every thirty- 
eight, counting men, women and children, in France 
is a "torpid," "emasculated" dependent upon the 
State. That is socialism as nearly as any State has 
adopted it thus far, and who applauds it? This is 
the system of coddling men into the Kingdom of 
Heaven, and who regards the France of to-day as in 
the least resembling that locality ? Because the State 
may deal well enough with inanimate things, like 
letters, telegrams, and packages of merchandise, is 
used as an argument to show that the State would 
handle our personal concerns and relations to one an- 
other well. It is false analogy. While a bureau- 
cracy produces no riots among a pile of letters and 
packages, it necessarily, by its mere rule-of-thumb 
methods, pleases no man and hampers many. If 
the men of a nation give in to the tyranny, individual 
enterprise and initiative go. The postal service, 
and the railway service of France, are striking illus- 
trations of how a bureaucracy eats away ambition, 
prowess and any enthusiasm of performance. The 
law of survival lies at the bottom of each man's soul, 
as his master. Each of us must be permitted to gain 
something for ourselves and for our own; if we are to 
put any devil into our work. We must live in the 
hope of rewards, if we are to live blithely and give of 
our best. If the State is to measure the service of 
each one of us with a yard-stick, we will grow to 



CONCLUSION 351 

measure our output by the yard-stick, and tena 
toward the helplessness of telegrams, letters and 
packages, which may be sent to wrong addresses, 
crumpled and torn by careless functionaries, or sent 
to a dead-letter office if in the least complicated, or 
out of the common in appearance. 

Even the casual reader will have noticed in these 
pages reference to the large sums spent in support of 
an ever-increasing number of paupers. It looks on 
the surface as though here in England, too, there is a 
tendency to lean unduly upon the State. The gener- 
ous, not to say affectionate, interest in her poorer 
population by England arises, however, from quite 
another source. I still believe, though at the present 
writing the signs of the times do not perhaps warrant 
it, that the English have no taste for the bureaucratic 
socialism I have outlined. It is because they are 
English, not because there is any general feeling that 
they have a right to be supported by the State, that 
there is in England this generous largesse for the poor 
and the unfortunate. There is a wide difference be- 
tween the kindly doles of a friend, and the assump- 
tion of a right to pick his purse. England's million 
paupers are not such a drag upon the State, not such 
a numbing influence upon others, not such an ex- 
ample of unenterprising feeders at the public crib, 
as are the million petty officials of the State in France. 
At least, nobody in England strives and studies to be- 
come a pauper, as his end and aim in life; while 
thousands in France prepare themselves to pass the 
examinations entitling them to become pensioners of 
the State, to be drugged to torpidity by petty duties 



352 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

for the rest of their lives. There is a possible political 
and domestic salvation for the pauper, there is none 
for the petty employe of the State. 

He has studied England in vain if he has not con- 
vinced himself that the core of their vigor and enter- 
prise is their independence, their individualism, their 
willingness and their ability to take care of themselves 
under all circumstances. This socialistic condition 
of national life produces men of ignoble economies 
and timorous patriotism. What boots it that the 
Bank of France to-day has a hoard of over $700,000, 
000 in gold, more than any other country at the mo- 
ment, if she cannot breed men to defend it, men to 
use it in her own industries and commercial enter- 
prises, and if at any moment Germany may march 
again across her frontiers to take another milliard 
and another of her departments? What are such 
economies worth to the people of France? 

We have remarked more than once in these pages 
that there were here and there signs of decadence in 
England, that perhaps we may be looking on at the 
parting of the ways in the history of this colossal Em- 
pire. If this be true, we have put our finger on the 
sore spot. Their history, their traditions and prec- 
edents, all point away from this modem tendency to 
lean upon the State. 

The suffrage is new in England, the newly made 
electorate is still uneducated, still comparatively little 
interested in larger political affairs. Even now the 
great majority of the English are only — as they al- 
ways have been — keen to be well governed, they 
show no signs of artificial political excitement looking 



CONCLUSION 353 

toward an active participation for themselves. They 
still prefer to be let alone as they did a thousand years 
ago. It is a novelty to them to find that they can 
coerce the State into taking care of them. For the 
moment the novelty of the situation stirs a certain 
number of them, and there are self-appointed leaders 
in plenty to urge them on. But not until the Saxon 
ceases to be a Saxon will he really take to this kindly 
and eagerly. If that time ever comes then indeed the 
British Empire will crumble fast enough. 

These days of new commercial rivals, and of intense 
commercial competition, have had a serious effect 
upon English life as we have seen, and it is folly for the 
Englishman to ignore them, or to pooh-pooh them. 
It is, however, folly worse confounded to turn from 
his virile lineage of individual independence to the 
weak alternative of petty State interference at every 
turn as a refuge or a remedy. Grant that one in 
forty of the inhabitants is a domestic servant, that one 
in every forty-four is a pauper, that one in every 
eleven in Ireland is living on the rates, that lunacy 
is increasing, that the birth-rate is steadily declining, 
that 30.7 per cent of the population of London is in 
poverty, that the entire middle and upper class in 
London number only 17.8 per cent of the population, 
and all this is true, does the solution of these and 
other problems lie in any scheme for making men less 
independent, more timorous, more ignobly cautious, 
readier to trust to the State rather than to themselves 
to extricate the nation from this slough of despond? 
It may be so, but as I study them and their history, 
I try in vain to make myself see it 



354 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

Whether as individuals, or as nations, we cooperate 
valiantly in bringing upon ourselves our own unhappi- 
ness. England has been steadily increasing her taxa- 
tion, steadily increasing the toll upon large fortunes of 
late, flirting in short with the theory that the curbing 
of wealth means distribution to the poor, and now 
she is aghast at the number of the unemployed, and 
at the decrease in her export and import trade. Just 
why capital should continue to offer itself upon the 
altar of taxation indefinitely it is hard to see, and yet 
without capital, and capital encouraged and pro- 
tected, there can be no employment of labor, and no 
increasing commerce and industry. 

We have in America the largest aggregations of 
wealth under one control in the world. We have 
one man with more money than any man in history 
has ever had. We have also a population of nearly 
ninety millions, increasing of late years at the rate of 
a million a year, and we cannot get men enough in 
years of average prosperity to do our work, and we 
pay the highest wages, and our people live in the 
greatest average comfort. There may be, and there 
has been undoubtedly, misuse of wealth, but wealth 
qim wealth is a blessing to everybody. Because one 
strong man commits murder no one would set out to 
legislate so that no man shall be strong. Any legis- 
lation looking toward the curbing of the competent 
and the plundering of the thrifty can end in but one 
way. 

When one sees evidences of such intentions in Eng- 
land it is quite within bounds to prophesy evil days 
to come. England of all nations has made her way 



CONCLUSION 355 

in the world by giving her citizens, and protecting 
her citizens in, the largest liberty compatible with fair 
play to all. When she shows signs of hampering 
her strong men, of curtailing their enterprise, and of 
withholding part of the prizes they win, she is turning 
her back on her whole history, and interfering with 
the best and the unique qualities of her people. 

I know of not one but several English fortunes, and 
there are no doubt many more, which have been 
lodged in Switzerland, where there is no taxation up- 
on foreign securities. The books are kept there, the 
control is there, and this is done on the ground that 
taxation in England is becoming confiscatory. This 
means taking the very blood out of the veins of the 
body politic. At the same time the Prime Minister 
is announcing ofl&cially, as a result of a recent un- 
fortunate and leaky interview with the German Em- 
peror, that England proposes to maintain the two- 
power standard of her fleet. The two-power stand- 
ard means, that her fighting force at sea is to be kept 
equal to that of any two other powers plus ten per 
cent. These are brave words, but it is almost laugh- 
able to think what would happen should America 
and Germany start to build ships against her. Eng- 
land would be bankrupt in ten years, her population 
would emigrate to Canada, South Africa, Australia, 
and the United States, and the lonely island would 
become a fourth-rate power used principally as a 
play-ground by Americans. 

Though we Americans may not like the English, 
we are of the same race, and at the bottom I, and most 
of my countrymen, would not like to see the old man 



356 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

downed. There are several things that may happen 
to divert destiny. Should England go to war now 
with Germany she would probably win and would 
badly damage her most serious and most irritating 
rival, and give her shipping, her industries, and her 
commerce a new lease of life. Her premier securi- 
ties, which, by the way, have declined in value enor- 
mously in the last ten years, would go up, and there 
would be a wave of enterprise and revived hope 
throughout the Empire. That may happen, and if 
it is to happen, the sooner the better for England. 
The Germans since 1870 have taken the place of the 
English as the boors of Europe, and there would be 
few tears shed in any capital in Christendom were 
they chastened. 

A political and commercial federation of this great 
Empire is a second possibility, the resiilt of which 
would necessarily put England in a very powerful 
position. Wheat, coal, iron-ore, cattle, sugar, oil, 
all the sinews of national life, are there, waiting to be 
organized for offence and defence, while England 
still smiles superciliously upon her colonies. Canada 
alone could feed her. Canada alone has a wealth 
of lumber, coal, iron, limestone and good harbors 
where ships could be built, with all the materials for 
the complete building almost within a stone's throw 
of the docks. An Imperial Parliament, with the 
natural resources of the great Empire behind it, and 
the revived energy of a splendid race behind that, 
and the unhampered capital of the bankers of the 
world behind that, and unimpaired credit to bootj 
would solve the problem swiftly enough. 



CONCLUSION 357 

Still another possibility of a renewal of the national 
life lies in the Englishman's way of working through 
shifty compromises, till he reaches a practicable 
hypothesis to go upon. He may be doing that now. 
These things that we are enumerating as symptoms 
of a mortal disease may be merely the various phases 
of recovery. England's agriculture was nearly taxed 
out of existence by the number of her paupers in the 
forties, but drastic methods saved her. She has en- 
dured fire, and plague, and famine, and escaped, and 
this may happen again. She has two precious assets 
to help her. The one is the independence of her best 
and most powerful citizens, men who despise popu- 
larity for its own sake — men like @k¥@kMik4, Presi- 
dent Eliot, Choate and Root in our own country -— 
the very mainstays of their country wherever they be. 
There is nothing shifty or selfish about them, and 
they dare tell the mob that the honey of the dema- 
gogue is in reality poison. Such a man was Lord 
Salisbury, such another is Grey, the present Secretary 
of State, and there are many more. When matters 
come to the worst, the Saxon races have always been 
able to produce their own saviors in this type of man. 
The Cromwells and the Lincolns are not all dead 
yet. 

The English people, too, are not a chattering race. 
He who has lived in Spain, in Italy, in France, real- 
izes that one of the chief differences between those 
countries and the northern nations is that the people 
in the former live in the streets, the people of the latter 
live in their houses. Every barber's shop, cafe and 
street comer in Madrid, or in Florence, and even to 



358 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

some extent in Paris, is a loafing place, a debating 
club, and a political and social meeting place. Men 
do not think, they talk! London may be gloomy, 
New York and Chicago deserted after sunset, but 
Madrid, Rome, and Paris are alive with swarming, 
gesticulating, chattering thousands. The climate 
may have much to do with this, but for the moment I 
have nothing to say to that; the fact remains. The 
doers and the governors of the world to-day are not 
spending their leisure chattering in the streets. One 
may laugh at the moroseness, the dulness, the heavi- 
ness; one may make epigrams to the effect that we 
take our pleasures sadly, but somehow we feel that 
after all the laugh is with us, for though we may take 
our pleasures sadly, we have taken a grim grip upon 
much the most and the best of the world, and the 
sinewy Saxon hand shows only slight signs of relaxing. 

This independence of the few, and this silent steadi- 
ness of the many, must be reckoned with as the un- 
known quantities always in abeyance in England, 
and of enormous potential force. 

I note these three contingencies, war, an Imperial 
Federation, and the steadiness of the people and the 
independence of their governing class, as likely, any 
one of them, to change the present trend of things. 
The last is, of course, the serious and valuable asset. 
For a thousand years these people have held to the 
same general lines of progress. Let the best govern, 
let the rest alone, and give us a workable not a theoret- 
ical lead over our fences. 

They will see some day, one hopes, that the present 
day doctrines we have described are not suited to their 



CONCLUSION 359 

race. If they were not so parochial, if they did not so 
confidently believe, as Doctor Johnson once said, and 
as some of their statesmen have broadly hinted many 
times since, that "all foreigners are mostly fools," 
they would be much nearer a reahzation of this than 
they are now. The ignorance of their masses, which 
is complete, and even of their governors and gentle- 
men, of the political and social and economic methods 
of other countries is extraordinary. Of what the 
very doctrines they are now tampering with have 
done in France, in Germany, and even in their own 
colonies, they are blandly oblivious. They seem to 
be constitutionally unable to learn anything from the 
blows other nations have received, or are now receiv- 
ing, they must be hit, and hit hard, before they awake 
to the fact that there is any danger. That is one rea- 
son why it is so difficult to visualize to one's self what 
will happen. They are being hit, and hit hard, just 
now. One mailed fist is sometimes shaken perilously 
near the British nose. What they will do when once 
they are well awake to the situation, I for one dechne 
to prophesy. Those who have read these pages may 
perhaps be able to come to a conclusion more satis- 
factory to them than mine would be. 

Whatever may be the outcome of the commercial 
and industrial ferment which has brought to the fore 
new problems, not only for England, but for other 
nation?.. England has taught, and still teaches, man- 
kind the art of governing other races, and has worked 
out along common-sense lines the only feasible 
method of securing peace and prosperity under a 
democratic form of government. Barring America, 



36o ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 

I should say that the masses in England are still to- 
day, in spite of much poverty, in spite of the suffer- 
ing contingent upon the re-adjustment of industrial 
methods, the most contented, the least nervous about 
the final outcome, and the most confident in Europe. 
Personally I am deeply in debt to the English for 
many delightful friendships, for generous and un- 
stinted hospitality, and for teaching me much that I 
have tried in these pages to pass on to my own 
countrymen. 

"Were my heart as some men's are, thy errors would not move 

me! 
But thy faults I curious find, and speak because I love thee! 
Patience is a thing divine: and far, I grant, above me! 

Foes sometimes befriend us more, our blacker deeds objecting, 
Than th' obsequious bosom guest, with false respect affecting, 
l^riendship is the Glass of Truth, our hidden stains detecting. 

Hidden mischief to conceal in State or Love is treason!" 



INDEX 



Advertising, 23. 

Alfred, regime of, 38-30. 

Archbishop of Canterbury, salary 
of, 71. 

Aristocracy, philosophy of, 54. 

Army recruits, physical condition 
of, 26-27. 

Arnold, Matthew, social system de- 
scribed by, 163. 

Asquith, 194. 

Bagehot, Walter, 35. 

Balfour, Prime Minister, 98; 117; 
121, 

Basque, representative of, 37. 

Bell, Rev., established school in Eng- 
land, 162. 

Bishop of London, salary of, 71; 72; 
influence of, 73, 

Bruce, Geo. Wm. Thos. Brudenell, 
fourth Marquis of Ailesbury, 96. 

Carlyle, opinion of Englishmen, 27. 
Chamberlain, 71; 121. 
Characteristics, 4-5; 20, 21-22; 28, 

29. 
Christian Science, church of, 67, 68; 

70. 
Chmate, 13; 14; 36. 
Congo Free State, atrocities in, 69. 
Corneille, 155. 
Corporation Act, 280. 
Court, Bow Street, 19; 39. 
Courts, 281, 282. 
Cromer, 153. 
Curzon, late viceroy of India, 63; 

opinion of British Empire, 63-64. 

Dante, 155. 

Democracy, philosophy of, 54. 

Derby Day, 15. 

Dilke, Sir Charles, 121. 



Disraeli, 71. 
Dukes of Leeds, 48. 

Earls, 49. 

Education Bill, passing of, 162, 163. 

Edward the Seventh, 71-72. 

England, population of, 60-61; 
wars of, 61; 62; 66-67; posses- 
sions of, 81; amount spent on 
navy of, 81; income of, 84-85; 
ownership of land in, 88-89; 
church property of, 95-96; status 
of clergy in, 98; colonies, opinions 
of, 100; exports of, 103-104; im- 
ports of, 104; decadence in, 146- 
147; Hterature of, 154-156; 166; 
commercial supremacy of, 165; 
illiteracy among voters, 169; li- 
braries in, 188; outdoor sports, 
19; 173-174; 198. 

England and Wales, population of, 
78; 288; number of clergy in, 79; 
customs of, 79; local debt of, 82; 
expenditures of, 82; 83; distribu- 
tion of land in, 90-91; percentage 
of illiteracy in, 167, 168. 

Epsom Downs, 15. 

Food and Drugs Acts, 291. 
Fox, entered Parliament, 58. 

George the First, King of England, 

71- 
Gladstone, Prime Minister, 71; 99 j 

121; 122. 
Goethe, 155. 

Government, form of, 62-63. 
Great Britain, population of, 33-34; 

area of, 33; income of, 34-35; 

Roman invasion of, 36-37; early 

invasion of, 37; types of invaders, 

37, 38. 



361 



362 



INDEX 



Heine, 12. 

Hobbes, 22. 

House of Commons, 56; 72; seating 
capacity of, 74; diversity of ques- 
tions discussed in, 74; 75; mem- 
bers of, in 1874, 172; 194. 

House of Lords, 18; 41; 46, 47, 48, 
49; democratic institution, 52; 
composed of, 66; 72. 

Iberian, meaning of, 37. 

Ireland, history of, 231, 232, 233- 
240; population of, 242; titles in, 
244-245 ; character of people in, 
247; rebeUion in, 248. 

Irish Parliament, 243. 

James, abdicated throne in 1689, 

41. 
Jesuit Fathers, church of, 68-69; 70. 
Julien, 13. 

Kitchener, 153. 

Leopold, 69; 70, 

Licensing Act, 79-80; amount of 
liquor consumed, 80; amount of 
money spent for Hquor, 81; 149. 

Liverpool, entered Parliament, 58. 

London, description of, 7-8; urban 
population, 79; rural population, 

79- 
Lord Mayor's Show, 16. 
Lords, 49. 

Magna Charta, 40. 
Meredith, 23, 
Milner, 153. 
Montesquieu, 43. 
Morley, 71; 75; 160. 

Newspapers, 22-23; 178, 179-18S. 

Opium, sale of, 75; licensed in Sin- 
gapore, 75 ; revenue from, 75-76; 

^ BD -7.6 



Parliament, 38; number of barons 
summoned to, 50; 57; quahfica- 
tions for membership in, 59; pres- 
ent membership in, 75. 

Piccadilly, 9; 15. 

Pitt, 57. 

Police, proportion of, 17; control of 
crowds and traffic, 17. 

Poynings's Act, 233. 

Racine, 155. 

Rosebery, 121; 160; 196. 

Russell, John, entered Parliament, 

S8. 

Salisbury, 121. 

Saturday Review, 157, 

Saxons, history of, 38, 39-40; 41- 

42; 43-44; 53; 55; 59-60; 65. 

Schiller, 155. 

School Boards, 163. 

Schools, religious, 162; control of, 

280-2S1; universities, 176. 
Servant class, one in forty of total 

population, wages, distinctions, 

and gradations, 5-6. 
Shops, 10. 

Simon de Montfort, 42; 53-54; 62. 
St. Paul, cathedral of, 69-70. 
State Church, support of, 81; 96; 

97; lOI. 
Suffrage, 183-184; 279. 

Tacitus, opinion of climate, 2)(>'i 

opinion of early settlers, 39. 
Taine, 118. 

Vice, 24-25. 
Victoria, Queen, 71. 

Walpole, 71. 

Wellington, 248. 

William the Conqueror, 40-41. 

Workmen's Compensation Act of 

1906, 79. 
Wrottesleys, 48. 




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